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Kant's Doctrine of Teleology 



BY 

Elijah Evehett Kresge 



A DISSEETATION 

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School op the University 

op Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment op the Requirements 

for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. 

(Department of Philosophy) 



THE FRANCIS s^Hg^o PRINTING CO. 
ALLENTOWN, l'A. 

1914 



Kant's Doctrine of Teleology 



BY 

Elijah Everett Kbesoe 



A DISSERTATION 

>B S SENTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UxiVEBSITY 

of Pennsylvania in Pabtial Fulfillment of the Requibements 

FOB THE DeGBBE OF DoCTOB OF PHILOSOPHY. 

(Depabtment of Philosophy) 



THE FBANCI8 <*^P> PBIKTINQ CO. 

ALLKNTOWN, PA. 

1914 



9 



t -yO 



to 



CONTENTS. 



PART ONE. 
The Place of the Critique of Judgment in the Kantian System, 

PART TWO. 
Exposition of the Doctrine of Teleology. 

1. The Things That Require Teleological Explanation. 

(1). Organic Nature. 

(2); Collective Nature Viewed in Relation to 
Man Under Moral Laws. 

II. Our Mental Need of the Teleological Principle and the 
Legitimate Use That Can be Made of It. 
III. The Theoretic Limitation and the Moral Validity of the 
Teleological Assumptions. 

PART THREE. 
An Appreciation and a Criticism of the Doctrine as Elaborated 

by the Author. 

3 






Gift 

-a 

FEB 4 I9ISI 



PREFACE. 



Kant's Doctrine of Teleology was selected as the subject of 
this Dissertation partly because of my own interest in the prob- 
lem, and partly because it is a phase of the Kantian philosophy 
that has been neglected by English students. The Critique of 
Judgment was introduced into France soon after its publica- 
tion in Berlin, and was quite favorably received. In 1796 the 
entire work was translated into French by Imhoff. A revival 
of interest in art called forth a French version by Keratry and 
YVeyland in 1823; and a third translation was made by Barni, 
in 1846. But the entire work was not made accessible to Eng- 
lish readers until twenty years ago. 

In English Commentaries on the Critical Philosophy very 
little space is devoted to the Critique of Judgment in compari- 
son with the Critiques of Pure and Practical Reason, while 
scarcely anything is given on the second part of it, which deals 
directly with this problem. The most thorough discussion of 
the subject in any English work is that given by Caird in the 
second volume of his Critical Philosophy of Kant. There is 
also a very valuable Dissertation on The Sources and Develop- 
ment of Kanfs Doctrine of Teleology by Professor J. H. Tufts, 
of the University of Chicago. The main object of Professor 
Tufts was to bring to the attention of English students some 
valuable historical material which at that time (1892) had just 
been published in Germany by Reicke, in the "Lose Blaetter 
aus Kant's Nachlass." The author shows ,some of the con- 
necting links in teleological thinking, especially as St effected Kant ; 
but he does not attempt to give an account of the doctrine itself 
as it is developed by Kant. For this reason I have made this 
Dissertation primarily an Exposition of the doctrine as elab- 



orated by Kant in the second part of the Critique of Judgment, 
which is his special treatment of the problem and his final word 
on the subject. 

In Part One I give a brief account of the place of the 
Critique of Judgment in Kant's system, setting forth, as I be- 
lieve, the fact that the last Critique shaped itself in his mind 
gradually, through influences brought to bear upon him 
from without as well as through pressure from within 
bis own system. In Part Two I give an exposition of 
the doctrine as elaborated by Kant himself. My exposition I 
based on Hartenstein's text. Because of the embarrassing mix- 
ture of the material and the fatiguing repetition of the same 
thought in slightly different language and in altogether differ- 
ent connections throughout the text, I thought it best to dis- 
regard the author's divisions altogether. The usual division 
into Analytic, Dialectic, etc., is due to a mere fancy of the 
author; and it confuses rather than aids the student. I have 
arranged the material under the three heads indicated in Part 
Two of the table of contents because this best expresses the 
real order of the development. I have selected and arranged 
the material so as to show what must be explained teleologi- 
cally; why it must be thus explained; and the validity of such 
explanation. I have endeavored to give, as clearly as possible, 
Kant's own arguments, indicating the sections from which the 
arguments are taken. The references are to sections rather 
than to pages, because the sections are the same in all versions, 
German, French, or English, while the pages differ in the dif- 
ferent versions. In Part Three I offer a few words by way of 
an appreciation and a criticism, showing how, in my judgment, 
Kant might have carried his assumptions to more positive con- 
clusions. 

My use of secondary sources I have indicated in the Bibli- 
ography and the notes. But I wish to express my special in- 
debtedness to Professor Edgar A. Singer, and Professor Lewis 
W. Flaccus, of the University of Pennsylvania, under whom I 
pursued my studies of Kant; and also my gratitude to Pro- 
fessor William Romaine Newbold, of the department of Ancient 
Fhilosophy, who first inspired me with a love for philosophy. 

R E. KRESGE, 
September, 1914. AMentown, Pa. 



PART ONE 



THE PLACE OF THE CKITIQUE OF JUDGMENT IN 
KANT'S SYSTEM. 



THE PLACE OF THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT IN 
KANT'S SYSTEM. 

It is evident from what Kant himself says that the Critique 
of Judgment was not included in the original plan of his criti- 
cal investigations. The idea of a third Critique was introduced 
gradually, but quite naturally, as the earnest little man advanced 
in his honest efforts after exact knowledge. In a letter writ- 
ten to Herz, in 1772, he give ( s the ground-plan of a work which 
he had in mind at that time. He says: "I am planning a work 
under the title: the limits of sensibility and reason. The work 
will consist of two parts: a theoretical and practical. The first 
falls into two sections: first phenomenology in general, and 
second, the nature and methods of metaphysics. The second 
likewise falls into two parts: first the general principles of 
(feeling) and desire, and second the foundations of morality."a 
In this plan the Critiques of Pure and Practical Reason are 
clearly foreshadowed, but there is no evidence that Kant had 
in mind, at this early date, a third Critique. 

In the Critique^ of Pure and Practical Reason Kant felt, 
for the time being, that he had covered the whole field of 
philosophy that could be investigated by means of definite 
a priori principles. All other possible realms of investigation 
fall within the sphere of merely empirical and contingent prin- 
ciples, and must, therefore, be excluded from the legitimate 
scope of pure philosophy. Natural science and all technically 
practical rules derived therefrom are only corollaries to pure 
philosophy and must not be exalted into an equality with it. 
Up to the time of the publication of the first two Critiques 
Kant had recognized only two definite a priori laws or principles, 
viz., causation, by means of which the understanding legislates 
for nature, and freedom, by means of which reason legislates 



a Briefe, H. Vol. VIII. 



10 

for morality. All other rules are merely precepts and not uni- 
versal law,s or necessary principles. 

A further evidence that the Critique of Judgment was not 
in the mind of Kant from the beginning is a note appended to 
the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, published in 
1781, in which he criticises Baumgarten for his attempt to base 
a critical study of the Beautiful on principles of pure reason. 
Kant declares such an attempt to be fruitless, because the rules 
in question "are purely empirical and must not be taken for 
a priori principles by which our judgments of taste may be 
guided." It is quite clear from this statement that he recog- 
nizes only the two a priori principles of causation and freedom. 
But between the appearance of the first and second edition^ of 
the Critique of Pure Reason his view,s on this matter had 
undergone some modification. In the second edition, published 
m 1787, we find the confident phrase "are in their sources 
purely empirical," changed to the less positive form: "are in 
their main sources empirical." In a letter to Reinhold, written 
soon after the publication of the second edition of the Critique 
of Pure Reason, statements are made which indicate a complete 
change of view. In this letter he says that in his critical studies 
he has been led to recognize a new department of critical philos- 
ophy; and thijS new department is nothing other than the field 
which Baumgarten had investigated, and which Kant had criti- 
cised, six years before, as not belonging to pure philosophy. He 
says further, in this letter to Reinhold, that he has been led to 
recognize another kind of a priori principle different from those 
stated in the Critiques of Pure and Practical Reason. This new 
a priori principle i,s one legislating through the feelings. 

It may not be possible to say with certainty by what means 
Kant was led on beyond the position taken in the first two Crit- 
iques. It is quite likely, however, that the factors in the case 
were twofold. There was an external and also an internal in- 
fluence at work. He was influenced by the new interest awak- 
ened in the field of psychology, and also by the contradiction 
between the concept of nature and the concept of freedom as 
he himself had elaborated them. 



11 

The wave of individualism which spread over Europe after 
the middle of the Eighteenth Century produced a considerable 
amount of psychological literature in which the feelings were 
assigned an independent mental function and given a place along 
side of the intellect and the will. Baumgarten and Meyer, Sul- 
/.er and Mendelssohn, in their aesthetical studies, and Tetens, in 
his work on psychology, laid unusual emphasis upon the 
pleasure-pain faculty, and thus brought into prominence the 
feeling life, which philosophy had neglected since the days of 
Plato and Aristotle. Into this new field Kant entered with his 
keen analytical powers of mind. With Mendelssohn and Tetens 
he recognizes three separate mental faculties, viz., the faculty of 
knowledge, the feeling of pleasure and pain, and the will. But 
these men had failed to show that this feeling faculty legislates 
in any way a priority as Kant had previously shown the under- 
standing and the will to do. And Kant himself, for a time, failed 
to see in what way thi,s faculty legislates a priori. But while 
engaged in a Critique of Taste, he tells us, he discovered 
a priori principles for this faculty also, and thus has come to 
recognize three legitimate departments of pure philosophy, viz., 
Theoretic Philosophy, Practical Philosophy, and Teleology. In 
his correspondence with Reinhold he expresses the desire to de- 
vote his remaining days to the elucidation of the problems in 
this new field. The feelings, like the will, must be rescued from 
all empirical and contingent elements. 

But there was also a potent influence from another source 
which urged Kant on beyond the results of the first two Crit- 
ique^. He was led to the writing of the third Critique by a need 
which was left unsatisfied in his former works. There was a 
yawning gap between the concept of nature as established in 
the Critique of Pure Reason, and the concept of freedom as 
elaborated in the Critique of Practical Reason. There was want- 
ing a satisfactory principle of meditation in the .system. 

The matter which first attracted his attention was the prob- 
lem of pure knowledge, its conditions, its limitations, and its 
proper objects. This was the problem of the Critique of Pure 
Reason, where the conclusion was reached that nature as phe- 



12 

nomenon is the only object of which we can hope to acquire 
exact knowledge. But while wrestling with the problem of 
Pure Reason he recognized the fact that there is a field besides 
natural phenomena which must be included in a complete phil- 
osophy. A philosophy which aims at completeness must include 
the practical as well as the theoretical. That the practical was 
included in his original plan is clearly indicated in his letter to 
Herz. The subject matter of these two Critiques and the meth- 
od of treatment was shaping itself in his mind from 1772 to the 
time of their publication a decade or so later. 

But these two Critiques resulted in a sharp antithesis be- 
tween the phenomenal and the noumenal, or between nature 
and freedom. There was a great gulf between the two distinct 
worlds treated in these two works. And man, as a creature 
with an understanding and a will, is a citizen of these two 
worlds. On the one hand he is under the law of necessity and 
on the other he is under the 'law of freedom. His knowledge 
is of phenomena connected by necessary laws; but he wills the 
good in freedom. His understanding is sensibly conditioned, 
but his will, as a faculty which gives the law to itself, is un- 
conditioned. On the one hand he is conscious of himself as 
object and on the other as subject. Thus his consciousness, 
or the world within, becomes divided no less than the world 
without; and between this divided self there is, as yet, no satis- 
factory relation established. In these two Critiques Kant had 
separately emphasized the deduction of knowledge and of faith, 
of the speculative and the practical consciousness, until the 
unity of consciousness itself was lost. 

To say, as some have done, that Kant was not aware of 
this contradiction in his system is to disregard his own words, 
for a statement made in the Introduction to the Critique of 
Judgment clearly shows the province and function of each of 
the former Critiques, and also the contradictory character of 
the principles which they elaborate. He says : "The under- 
standing legislates a priori for nature as an object of sense: 
Reason legislates a priori for freedom and its peculiar causal- 
ity. The realm of the natural concept under the one legisla- 



13 

tion, and that of the concept of freedom under the other are 
entirely removed from all mutual influence. The concept of 
freedom determines nothing in respect of the theoretical cogni- 
tion of nature; and the natural concept determines nothing in 
respect of the practical laws of freedom. So far then it is 
not possible to throw a bridge from the one realm to the other/* a 
Legislation by the understanding is valid only for cognition; 
and legislation by the reason is valid only for the will. The 
province of the one is nature; and the province of the other 
is morality and the religious life. 

But this, as Hegel has pointed out, would degrade freedom 
into an abstract, barren, contentless non-entity. To save free- 
dom from this degradation it must in some way be made to 
realize itself in the world of sense. There must be a possible 
relation between nature and freedom. And Kant was well 
aware of this for he says: "Now although an immeasurable 
gulf is thus fixed between the realm of nature and the realm 
of freedom so that no transition from the first to the second 
is possible, yet the second is meant to have an influence upon 
the first. The concept of freedom is meant to realize in the 
world of sense the purpose proposed by its laws, and conse- 
quently nature must be so thought that the conformity of its 
form, at least harmonizes with the possibility of the purpose to 
be effected in it according to the laws of freedom."^ In the 
second part of the Critique of Practical Reason the gap which 
is opened in the Analytic is bridged over by the concept of 
freedom reaching down out of its supersensible realm and ac- 
tualizing in the world of sense the purpose proposed by its 
laws. Thus nature and freedom are connected in a purely 
practical way. 

But this strained and formal way of effecting a union 
between nature and freedom in the Dialectic of the Practical 
Reason does not solve the problem. The consciousness is still 
divided. There is still no bridge over the gap which divides 
our consciousness of self as object and self as subject. Kant 

a Intro, to the Critique of Judgment, section IX. 
b Intro to the Critique of Judgment, section II. 



14 

was aware of the need of a more positive mediating principle 
to bridge over the gulf and unite the divided inner world. And 
the consciousness of this need, together with the discoveries 
made in his studies of the feelings, led him to write the third 
Critique which becomes the coping stone of his critical arch. 

Bosenquet clearly indicates the place and function of the 
Critique of Judgment in the following concise words: "In 
his life-long labors for the reorganization of philosophy, Kant 
may be said to have aimed at three cardinal points. First, he 
desired to justify the conception of a natural order; secondly, 
the conception of a moral order; and thirdly, the conception 
of the compatibility between the natural and the moral order. 
The first of these problems formed the substance of the Crit- 
ique of Pure Reason; the second was treated in the Critique 
of Practical Reason; and the third necessarily arose out of 
the relation between the other two. * * * And although 
the formal compatibility of nature and freedom had been es- 
tablished by Kant, as he believed, in the negative demarcation 
between that which the first two Critiques expounded, it was 
inevitable that he should subsequently be led on to suggest 
some more positive combination. This attempt was made in 
the Critique of the Powers of Judgment/'^ 

It is quite evident that the results of the Critiques of 
Pure and Practical Reason left the need of a more positive 
combination of the concept of nature and freedom than the 
mere formal one declared in the Dialectic of the Practical Rea- 
son. This more positive combination he ultimately finds in 
the new phase of the principle of design as elaborated in the 
Critique of Judgment. In his critical study of the feelings, 
to which he was attracted by the newly awakened interest in 
psychology, he discovers the a priori principle of design by 
means of which, first in a mere formal way, and afterwards 
also in an objective way, he brings about a union between 
sense and understanding, and between nature and freedom, in 
a theoretic way and thus in advance of the purely practical 



a History of Aesthetics, p. 256. 



15 

point of view in the second Critique. It is by means of the 
feelings that we first discover a harmony between our con- 
sciousness of objects and our consciousness of self. It is by 
means of the feelings also that we first discover a harmony 
between the different powers which divide the phenomena of 
self consciousness from each other. "We can feel what we 
can neither know nor will." We feel a union between our- 
selves as object and subject the hidden ground of which the 
understanding cannot fathom. If then we wish to find the 
unity of our self-consciousness, or the unity of the two worlds 
of our experience, in a theoretic way different from the pure 
practical point of view established in the Critique of Practical 
Reason, it is clear that we must carry our critical investigations 
into this realm of the feelings. This is the position Kant had 
come to at the time that he was writing to Reinhold. Thus he 
was gradually, but quite naturally, led to the critical study of 
the feelings, the psychological faculty intermediate (between 
knowing and willing, to which the judgment, as the middle 
term between understanding and reason, corresponds. The cor- 
respondence between the intermediating function of the judg- 
ment and the intermediating function of the feelings is what 
led him to give the name Critique of Judgment to his last great 
work. 

Although we may feel that Kant's deduction of design as 
an a priori principle of judgment is superficial, he was never- 
theless sincere in his conviction that the judgment has an a 
priori principle by means of which it legislates in a certain ter- 
ritory of our critical investigations. As freedom is an a priori 
principle of reason as an automatic mental faculty, so the idea 
of design, or purposiveness, is an a priori principle of the judg- 
ment as an automatic mental faculty. "Judgment in general is 
the faculty of thinking the particular as contained under the 
universal. If the universal (the rule, the principle, the law) 
be given, the judgment which subsumes the particular under it 
is determinant. But if only the particular is given for which 
a universal must be found, the judgment is only reflective."a 

a Intro, to the Critique of Judgment, sec. IV. 



16 

Now the judgment as reflective has the autonomy like reason 
to give to itself the principle under which the discordant partic- 
ulars of our experience may be subsumed. And it is ju,st this 
task of finding a universal under which the manifold particu- 
lars of our experience must be subordinated that becomes the 
real problem of this new department of philosophy. A uni- 
versal must be found under which the manifold particulars of 
our experience mu,st be viewed, or nature cannot be made 
intelligible to ourselves. A principle must be found by means 
of which nature can be reduced to the unity of our intelli- 
gence. And since the particular forms of nature, for which 
a universal must be found, are so manifold and so varied, the 
reflective judgment, which must ascend from these particulars 
of our experience to the universal in nature, require^, on this 
account, a principle which it cannot borrow from experience, 
and hence to establish the possibility of a systematic subordina- 
tion of these varied particulars, under a universal intelligible 
to ourselves, the judgment as reflective, must give a law from 
and to itself; and this principle or law can be none other than 
that of design. ^ "Since no use of the cognitive faculties can be 
permitted without priciples, the reflective judgment must, in 
such cases, serve as a principle to itself."a By the aid of this 
principle nature is regarded by us as if it,s particular laws 
were not isolated and disparate, but connected and in rela- 
tion, deriving their unity under seeming diversity from an 
Intelligence which is at the source of nature. It is only by 
the assumption of such a principle that we can make nature, in 
certain of its aspects, intelligible to ourselves. The task of 
the teleologica'l judgment then is to trace the nature of reason 
beyond its own use in metaphysics into the general principles 
of systematizing a history of nature. We must view nature 
as if it were designed for our understanding. 

This design, or purposiveness, however, may be merely 
formal and subjective, or objective and real. In some cases the 
purposiveness resides only in the felt harmony of the form of 



C. of J., sec. 69. 



17 

the object with our cognitive faculties. In the case of a beau- 
tiful object, for example, we judge the form of the object to 
be purposive in relation to our perception of it, but cannot dis- 
cover any purposiveness that is served by the object. In 
this case the purposiveness is only formal and not real. It 
is purposive only in reference to us as subject. We are not 
permitted to say, in this case, that nature is purposive, but 
only that nature awakens in us the harmonious play of our 
faculties and we then feel the purposiveness. It is a "pur- 
posiveness without purpose." In some other cases, however, 
in an organism for example, the form of the object is judged to 
harmonize with a purpose in view of its existence. In this 
case we judge that the existence and the form of the object 
are adapted to an end. We judge the object to be purposive 
because of its internal form, and not merely because of the 
relation of its form to our perception of it. This kind of 
purposiveness is objective and real. In the former kind of 
purposiveness we employ the aesthetic judgment; i. e., we im- 
mediately feel a harmony between the form of the object and 
our cognitive faculties. The sense of the beautiful is this feel- 
ing of harmony between ourselves and objects. In the latter 
case we employ the teleological judgment; i. e., we judge that 
the object is an end in itself apart from our cognition of it. 
The Critique of Judgment, therefore, is divided into Two 
Parts : I, The Critique of Taste, or the Philosophy of the Beau- 
tiful and the sublime; and II, The Critique of Teleology, or the 
Application of the Idea of Design to Nature. 

But it is again quite evident that the whole of the Critique 
of Judgment in this two-fold division in which we now have 
it was not within the scope of Kant's plan when he wrote to 
Reinhold saying that he was engaged on a new Critique. His 
psychological interest in the feelings, which had been neglected 
in his former works, led him to a critical study of Taste. But 
a Critique of Taste was all that he had in mind at this time. 
It was while engaged on this Critique of Taste that he dis- 
covered the idea of purposiveness (in the formal sense noted 
above) and its a priori character. In our cognition of an ob- 



18 

ject there is always felt a discord between ourselves and the 
object. There is something in the object which evades our 
cognitive faculties as though it were not meant for us, and 
this is painful The result is a feeling of dualism between our- 
selves and nature. In the Practical Reason, likewise, we never 
get beyond the negative character of feeling. The effect of 
the ideal consciousness upon feeling is always in the first in- 
stance negative. "Moral feeling is the shrinking awe of na- 
ture before spirit." "Before the moral law our mortal nature 
doth tremble like a guilty thing surprised." It is in the purely 
aesthetic feelings that we, for the first time, get beyond this 
negative aspect to a higher positive. In the perception of a 
beautiful object there is immediately felt a harmony between 
ourselves and the object, and this feeling is one of pleasure. 
In our sense of the beautiful the spirit greets the object and the 
object readily responds. At this point he discovers, for the 
first time, a reason to postulate a union between the phenom- 
enal and the noumenal. In the feeling of pleasure in the per- 
ception of the Beautiful he discovers the needed principle of 
mediation between the sensible and the intelligible. It is true 
that the category of time, in a sense, mediates between the sen- 
sible and the intelligible. Already in the Transcendal Aes- 
thetic and Analytic the question arose as to how reason could 
act upon the data of sensibility. By what means does reason 
lay hold of sensible intuitions and make notions of them? 
Time, which is half intuition and half category, serves as the 
natural intermediary between sensible intuitions and concepts. 
But this schematism is strained and lacks the spontaniety and 
imrnediateness which we feel in the perception of the Beauti- 
ful. The ch^sm between sense and understanding remains in 
spite of the mediating function of time. But our experience 
of an object of beauty is of such a nature that we must feel, or 
judge, the object as if it were intended for us. The feeling 
of foreignness or remoteness, which we experience in the cogni- 
tion of objects, vanishes. This then is the deduction of this 
new phase of purposiveness. But this felt purposiveness is 
only formal and subjective. There is no purpose in the object 



19 

that we can discover, — nothing that the object serves. It is 
purposive only in reference to our perception of it. This 
Critique of Taste, or Philosophy of the Beautiful, is all that 
Kant had in mind at the time he wrote to Reinhold in 1788-89. 

Stadler, in his excellent work on Kant's Teleologie, thinks 
that Kant might well have ended his critical investigations at 
this point. In fact Stadler intimates that he would better have 
ended his critical labors here, because the second part of the 
Critique of Judgment adds nothing to the value of his system 
as a whole. Most of us, no doubt, disagree with Stadler on 
thi,s point; but regardless of whether or not Kant should have 
stopped here, there are two reasons why he did not. There 
was again something within his system and again a pressure 
from without that was urging him on to the further application 
of this newly discovered principle. 

About the time that he was writing to Reinhold, setting 
forth the plans of hi^s Critique of Taste, there appeared a 
rather severe criticism by Forster on the use of the teleologie 
principle in Kant's former works. This criticism called forth 
a treatise by Kant on : The Need of the Teleological Principle in 
Philosophy. In this treatise he reiterates that everything in 
natural science must be explained mechanically, but points out 
that this very principle implies its own limitation in that it re- 
quires that we use only such grounds of explanation as can 
be verified by experience. If things that we cannot experience 
as, for example, certain characteristics of organisms, or nature 
as a whole, are to be explained at all we must admit some 
principle that will supplement mechanism. This reply to Fors- 
ter points the way beyond the mere formal application of the 
idea of design in the realm of the Beautiful. 

But there was also something in the very nature of this 
formal purposiveness, which he had discovered, that led him 
on to make still further use of it. Caird has well said: "As 
soon as he had admitted that the consciousness of an object, 
even in subjective feeling, can be positively connected with our 
ideal consciousness, and so with the pure consciousness of self, 
he was naturally led to reconsider his whole theory of the con- 



20 

nection of the consciousness of an object with the conscious- 
ness of self as stated in the Critique of Pure Reason."a He 
was now led to consider the connection of nature and freedom 
in a theoretic way, and thus in advance of the purely practical 
point of view in the Critique of Practical Reason, or the mere 
formal presentation of it in the Critique of Taste. From the 
feeling of the union of the object with the subject in our ,sense 
of the Beautiful he passes on to the thinking of it, or to the 
conscious recognition of the two as united in one principle. 
This led him quite naturally to the application of the teleolog- 
ical judgment to objects themselves. Hence when the book ap- 
peared, three years after he had written to Reinhold, it was 
not merely a Critique of Taste, but a Critique of the powers of 
Judgment in the subjective and objective sense noted above. 



a The Critical Philosophy of Kant, Vol. II, p. 514. 



PART TWO 



EXPOSITION 

of 

KANT'S DOCTRINE OF TtiLEOLGY 

BASED ON THE TEXT OF 

THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT: PART II. 



I. 

THE THINGS THAT MUST BE EXPLAINED TELEO- 
L LOGICALLY. l 

In the First Part of the Critique of Judgment we learn 
that certain objects of nature, for example, objects of beauty, 
are judged to be purposive. We judge the object as if it were 
designed for us because we feel a pleasurable agreement be- 
tween ourselves and this particular kind of object. But we 
cannot discover any real purpose which this kind of object 
serves in itself. We are therefore compelled to judge beauti- 
ful objects as purposive only in reference to our perceptive fac- 
ulties. The purpose is not in the object itself, but in the rela- 
tion of its form to the .subject who perceives it. We may not 
say that the object is designed with the idea of beauty as an 
end. We can only say that we feel that kind of agreement be- 
tween ourselves and the object which we would feel if it were 
really designed for us. This kind of purposiveness is, there- 
fore, purely subjective and will not warrant the application of 
design in a real sense. 

The fundamental question of the Second Part of the Crit- 
ique of Judgment is: what kind of object, or what kind of ex- 
perience, will legitimately give occasion for the application of 
a purposiveness which is not subjective, but objective and real. 
Before we can answer this question we must distinguish, on 
the one hand, between an objective purposiveness which 
is merely formal and that which is material; and on the 
ether, between that which is only relative and hypothetical and 
that which is internal and real. 

Objective Purposiveness Which Is Merely Formal as Dis- 

2:\ 



24 

tinguished from That Which is Material. (Section 62.) In 
mathematics we find a purposiveness which is obviously objec- 
tive and intellectual, and not merely subjective and aesthetical. 
"All geometrical figures drawn on a principle display a mani- 
fold purposiveness in reference to their usefulness for the so- 
lution of many problems from a single principle." * * * "In 
so simple a figure as the circle lies the key to the solution of a 
multitude of problem,s." But to admire such objective use, 
or usefulness, as a real purpose of nature would be fanaticism. 
The use to which we put such figures, and the rule,s and principles 
drawn from them for purposes of utility has nothing to do 
whatever with the inner grounds and nature of these figures 
themselves. The circle or any geometrical figure is a concept 
which is determined by means of the understanding according 
to the principles of the understanding. "In the figure which I 
draw in conformity with a concept, i. e., in my own mode of 
representing that which is given to me externally, whatever it 
may be in itself, it is I that introduce the purposivene,ss ; I get 
no empirical instructions from the object about the purposive- 
ness, and so I require in it no particular purpose external to 
myself." In this case there is a reference to our cognition 
which is not the ca>se in our mere perception of a beautiful ob- 
ject, but there is obviously nothing in the object itself that 
would warrant the application of design in a material sense. 
The adaptation of these mathematical figures and their prob- 
lems to our cognition, and the intellectual satisfaction that we 
derive therefrom is no indication of a real adaptation, but must 
be explained by the fact that such figures are constructions in 
space which is the one a priori form of external perception. 
We have not, in this matter, a material adaptation of things in- 
dependent of us, but merely the formal adaptation which of 
necessity belongs to things that are perceived by us. 

Relative Purposiveness as Distinguished from Inner Pur- 
posiveness. (Section 63, cf. section 67.) By relative, or exter- 
nal purposiveness, is meant that by which one thing in nature 
serves another as mean,s to an end; or where one thing in na- 



*>r» 



ture is useful to another thing in nature. Thus, for example, 
soil is useful for grass, and grass is useful for animals, and 
animals are useful for man. The question then is whether 
these external relations are to be judged as purposes of nature; 
more especially since they contain profit for man. We must 
not be deceived by that lazy teleology which assigns a real pur- 
posiveneSjS to these external relations which are all brought 
about by the mere mechanical operations of nature. Even 
things which in themselves mu,st be viewed as purposes of na- 
ture are, in their relation to other things, only so much raw 
material. Only under the assumed condition that something, 
man for example, is to live upon the earth can we judge the 
things which are necessary for his life to be natural purposes. 
"We can hence easily see that' an external purpose can be re- 
garded as an external natural purpose only under the condi- 
tion that the existence of this being to which it is immediately 
and directly advantageous is itself a purpose of nature." But 
"since this can never be completely determined by mere con- 
templation of nature, it follows that relative purposiveness, 
although it hypothetically give ( s indications of natural purposes, 
yet justifies no determinate teleological judgment."a 

The First Objects of Our Experience Which Require Tel- 
eological Explanation. (Sections 64, 65 and 66.) What kind 
of objects then will call for the application of the idea of 
design as a necessary principle of explanation? To warrant 
our departure from the mechanical explanation of things we 
must find a product of nature whose form is not possible ac- 
cording to mere natural laws; a product of nature whose form, 
in view of all the known laws of nature, is accidental, i. e., 
though a product of nature and thus, in a sense, subject to the 
laws of nature, is yet wholly inexplicable by means of these 
laws. Such an object, by its very nature, presupposes condi- 
tions of reason as the only ground of its explanation. "For, 
where the knowledge of all the natural laws that determine an 
object leaves its form unexplained and therefore acccidental, 
a Section 63. 



26 

then reason, which must regard every form of a product of 
nature as necessary, in order to the comprehension even of the 
conditions of its genesis, is driven by the absence of natural ne- 
cessity to regard the object as if it were possible only through 
the causality of reason itself, i. e., the causality is then referred 
to the faculty of acting in accordance with purposes, or with a 
will."* 

Now organisms, whether of the vegetable or the animal 
kingdom, manifest the enigmatical characteristics (from the 
standpoint of the understanding) described above. They are 
products of nature and thus subject to the law of necessity by 
which alone the understanding can explain them, and experi- 
ence of them become possible. Yet in view of these laws they 
are accidental, and, therefore, inexplicable by means of them. 
In the case of an object of mechanical causation we have a 
who'le arising from the action and reaction of parts prior to the 
whole. But we cannot thus account for an organic object, for 
here the whole is not the effect of parts which are prior to it. 
An organism is both cause and effect of itself. It produces it- 
self from within. It has the ground of its existence and per- 
petuation in itself, and is only partially conditioned by its en- 
vironment. It is a process in which means are used for a spe- 
cific end. It is a process in which the whole depends upon all 
the parts and the several par^s depend upon the whole; — 
where the beginning anticipates the end and the end presupposes 
the beginning. 

Let u,s take an example. A tree generates another tree 
according to a known natural lav/. But the tree produced is of 
the same genus, and so it produces itself generically. On the 
one hand, as effect, it is constantly self-produced; on the other 
hand, as cause it constantly produces itself, and so perpetuates 
itself generically. And, secondly, a tree perpetuates itself as 
an individual. It takes from its environment, from the air, 
and the soil, crude matter which is foreign to itself, and by a 
process unlike anything found anywhere in the inorganic world 

a Section 64. 



or in art, organizes it into its own peculiar life. And, thirdly, 
a tree perpetuates itself in such a way that each part depends 
reciprocally upon all the other parts. Thus the foliage depends 
upon the tree and the tree, in turn, upon the foliage. There 
can be no foliage without a tree and no tree without a foliage. 
"In an organized product of nature every part is reciprocally 
end and means."a 

It must be observed furthermore that while an organism 
differs essentially, on the one hand, from inorganic nature, it 
also differs essentially, on the other hand, from the products 
of human art. It is like a product of art in this respect: that 
every part exists for the sake of the other parts; but it differs 
from a product of art in that its parts are all organs recipro- 
cally producing each other. "In a watch, for example, one part 
is the instrument for moving the other part,s, but the wheel is 
not the effective cause of the production of other wheels; no 
doubt one part is for the sake of the others, but it does not 
exist by their means. In this case the producing cause of the 
parts and of their form,s is not contained in the nature of the 
material, but is external to it in a being who can produce effects 
according to ideas. Hence a watch-wheel does not produce 
other wheels, still less does one watch produce other watches, 
utilizing foreign material for this purpose ; hence it does not 
repair of it,self parts of which it has been deprived, nor does it 
make good for what was lacking in a first production by the ad- 
dition of missing parts, nor even if it has gone out of order does 
it repair itself, — all of which, on the contrary, we may expect 
from organized nature."^ An organized being then, which is 
to be judged in it,self and in its internal possibilities as a natural 
purpose, is one where all the parts depend upon each other 
both as to their form and their combination, and so produces a 
whole by its own causality. 

We have, therefore, a kind of causality the exact likeness 
of which we do not find anywhere else either in the inorganic 



a Section 64. 
b Section 65. 



28 

world or in the field of human art. It is unlike anything known 
by the understanding, for "causal combination as thought mere- 
ly by the understanding is a connection constituting an ever 
progressive series." According to the principles of the under- 
standing we can have only a linear series which is always di- 
rected forwards from the cause to the effect, but is never 
known to return upon itself in such a way that the effect in 
the series becomes reciprocally the cause of its cause. But in 
an organism we have just this enigmatical reversal in the series 
where the effect viewed one way becomes the cause in the series 
viewed another way. We have here a fact, therefore, which 
corresponds to nothing in nature as known by the understand- 
ing. 

How then shall we explain this enigmatical fact? It can- 
not be explained according to principles of the understanding 
because, as we have just seen, the understanding knows the 
things of nature only by means of the universal category of 
cause and effect progressing in a linear series. The judgment 
as an instrument of the understanding, subsumes the particular 
experience only under the general principles given to it by the 
understanding. But an organism whose causality works from 
both ends of the series is, in view of the law of causal combin- 
ation as known by the understanding, accidental, and there- 
fore cannot be explained mechanically. Neither can it be ex- 
plained without some important reservations, either after the 
analogy of art or of life; for "we ( say of nature and its faculty 
far too little if we describe it as an analogon of art, for in the 
products of art the artificer is external to the product, while an 
organism produces itself." * * * "We do better if we describe 
it after the analogy of life."a But even then we find 
ourselves between the charybdis of hylozoism, which assigns 
life to matter, which we know to be in its very nature inert and 
lifeless ; and the scylla of a dualism which places a soul external 
to matter as an organizing power. In this latter case we either 
make matter an instrument of a something which itself remains 



a Section 65. 



29 

unexplained, or else, if we make the soul an artificer external 
to matter, we remove the product from nature thus placing it 
beyond the bounds of knowledge altogether. The organic ob- 
ject, therefore, stands as a sort of middle term between nature 
and art which, because it cannot be reduced to either the one 
or the other, cannot be explained at all by the categories of the 
understanding. 

There i,s only one realm of possible causal explanation left 
to which we can appeal. This peculiar causation which we 
have discovered in organic nature corresponds to a causal com- 
bination that can be thought according to a concept of reason. 
By a concept of reason a causal combination can be thought 
which, regarded as a series, would lead either forward or back- 
ward. In such a series the thing that has been regarded as the 
effect may with equal propriety be regarded as the cause of that 
of which it is the effect. For example, a house, no doubt, is 
the cause of the money received for rent; but also conversely 
the idea of this possible income is the cause of the building 
of the house. Here we have the idea of a final cause, or an 
end set by reason, putting into operation the efficient causes. It 
is only by means of such a concept of reason that we can sat- 
isfactorily judge of the enigmatical characteristics of organized 
beings. "The closest analogon to the causality which we find 
in the organic products of nature is that which reveals itself in 
the organization of human society." 

In organized nature then we find the first thing that must 
be explained teleologically if it is to be explained at all. "It 
is absurd to hope that another Newton will arise in the future 
who shall make comprehensible to us the production of a blade 
of grass according to natural laws which no design has ordered. 
We must absolutely deny this insight to men. "a 
Organized beings first afford objective reality to the concept 
of a purpose of nature, and so gives to the science of nature 



a Section 75. 



30 

the basis for a teleology; i. e., a mode of judgment about nat- 
ural objects according to a special principle different from 
mechanism, a 

In What Sense Collective Nature Must Be Considered 
as a System Under the Rule of Purposes. (Sections 67, 82, 83, 
84, 86, 87 and 88; cf. al,so 63.) When we explain an organ r 
ism as the product of a design which must ultimately be rooted 
in Intelligence we thereby raise the question: What is this 
thing fort And when we consider the relation of such an or- 
ganism to its environment or to other things in nature, we 
raise the question of a final end of nature. What in nature, if 
anything, mu,st be viewed as its final end, or purpose, to which 
we must subordinate nature and her products as means? In 
other words: For what purpose are all these things of nature? 

There i^ only one thing in nature which of itself answers the 
question what it is for. "This is the organization of both sexes 
in their mutual relation for the propagation of their kind, since 
here we can always ask, as in the case of an individual, why 
must such a pair exist. The answer is: this pair first consti- 
tutes an organizing whole, though not an organized whole in a 
single body." (Section 82.) Beyond this nature gives us no 
answer as to the final end or purpose of her existence, or of 
anything that she produces. Nature, viewed merely as nature, 
has even no ultimate or last end. We are accustomed to con- 
sider man as the ultimate or last end of nature; but we do this 
because man is the only being who has the power to form 
a concept of an end, and who, by means of his superior intelli- 
gence, uses other things as means to himself. Thus we are in- 
clined to say that grass grows for the animal, and that the animal 
exist,s for man, without observing that we judge of the matter 



a The idea of final causation is used as a key to the order of the acci- 
dental in nature. While it operates by means of mechanical laws, it 
yet expresses a higher necessity and thus gives to these objects a unity 
which, according to mere mechanical laws they could not have. But 
the use of this principle, as we shall see in the next section, enables 
the understanding to lay the law not to nature, but only to itself. 



in this way only because man has been using these things for 
himself. Nature herself does not treat man as her ultimate 
end. He is only one link in nature's endless ,series of links. Na- 
ture treats man precisely as she treats her other products. "Na- 
ture has not in the least exempted him from its productive or 
irs destructive power,s, but has subjected everything to a me- 
chanism of its own without any purpose."a If we begin with 
man's existence as an end that ought to be we can legitimately 
reason backwards and say that the animal exists for him to use, 
and that the vegetable exists for the sake of the animal, and 
the soil for the sake of the vegetable. But if we begin with 
the things that are given in our experience we find nothing 
that would warrant us to reason forward to man's existence as 
an end that nature has in view. We might even, with Linnaeus, 
reason in the opposite direction, and say that man exists to put 
a check upon the carnivorous animals, and that the carnivora 
exist to check the over-multiplication of the herbivora, and that 
the herbivora exist to check the too luxuriant growth of vege- 
tables. Man thus becomes a means instead of an end. There 
is nothing in nature her ( self that would warrant our reasoning 
either one way or the other. If man's mere existence were an 
end that nature has in view then at least the soil which gives 
him birth and nutures him would have to be designed for this 
specific purpose. But the archeology of nature reveals nothing 
but a quite undesigned mechanism which does not regard one 
thing in nature more than any other. There is nothing in na- 
ture, therefore, that would warrant us to consider man's mere 
existence as the ultimate end of nature. Viewed simply as a 
product of nature he is only one of the steps of a process whose 
end we do not know. 

But, in spite of the fact that nature herself does not treat 
man as her final end, we are nevertheless compelled to look to 
man as the only creature who can be a final end if there i,s any 
final end at all. There is still another point of view from which 
we may consider the problem. Man is the only being who can 

a Section 82. 



32 

propose ends to himself; and may not nature be purposively 
related to an end which he proposes to himself as final? In this 
case we mt^st determine "what nature can supply to prepare him 
for what he must do himself in order to be a final purpose."a 
There are at least three things which man has proposed as final 
end for himself. These are: Happiness; Culture, or the per- 
fection of his powers; and the Moral Law, or Duty. 

It is quite evident, however, that nature cannot be viewed 
as purposive in reference to man's happiness, for "the concept 
of happiness is not one that man derives by abstraction from 
his instincts and so deduces from his animal nature; but it is a 
mere idea of a state that he wants to make adequate to the idea 
under merely empirical conditions/' But this is plainly impos- 
sible for three reasons. (1) "Man projects his idea of happi- 
ness in such different ways on account of the complications of 
his understanding with imagination and sense, and changes so 
often, that nature, if it were entirely subjected to his elective 
will, could receive absolutely no determinate, universal, and 
fixed law, so as to harmonize with this vascillating concept and 
thus with the purpose which each man arbitrarily sets before 
before himself."6 Happiness is too vague an idea to determine 
man's efforts. And nature cannot be viewed under any univer- 
sal principles of reason to harmonize with so vague and change- 
ful an end as happiness sets before us. And (2), if we could 
reduce the idea of happiness to a few elemental wants in re- 
gard to which we all agree, and if we would suppose man's 
power to attain his end,s to be indefinitely increased, we could 
still not suppose it possible that this ultimate natural end could 
be attained by him; for "he is not so constituted as to rest and 
be satisfied in any possession or enjoyment whatever."*; And 
in the (3) place our experience shows us that nature is alto- 
gether indifferent to man's happiness. "Nature has not taken 
him for her special darling and favored him with special bene- 
fits above all animals. Rather, in her destructive operations, — 
plagues, hunger, perils of waters, frosts, assaults of animals, — 

a Section 83. 
b Section 83. 
c Section 83. 



33 

in these things she has spared him as little as any other animal. "a 
And even if nature would treat him with special favor in refer- 
ence to his happiness his own passions and war-like propensities 
would spoil her work. "The value of life if estimated by what 
we can enjoy is easy to decide. * * * It sink.s below zero"b 
If then we look to happiness as an end which man ,sets for 
himself as final we are obliged to judge nature to be out of 
harmony with it. We cannot hope to receive any aid from 
nature in the attainment of this end. 

When we consider nature in relation to culture, i. e., the 
perfection of our powers and the taming of our passions, we 
have more hope of a satisfactory solution of the problem. Na- 
ture which i,s unfriendly, or at best indifferent to man's happi- 
ness, contributes, at least in an indirect way, to the culture of 
his passions and the exercise of his ,skillJ The very conflict 
between men of different degrees of culture and skill becomes 
a stimulus to the education of their powers, and in the end, 
the very misery incurred by the conflict will mean the develop- 
ment of the latent capacities of the human race. The drudgery 
of some makes possible the leisure of others in which the skill 
of the latter is developed. But the skill thus developed and 
that which this skill accomplishes, in the long run, returns again 
to those whose drudgery makes such leisure for others possible. 
"E3ven war may be a deep hidden and (perhaps) designed enter- 
prise of supreme wi,sdom for preparing men (through the func- 
tion of the State) for conformity to law. In spite of the dread- 
ful afflictions which it casts upon the human race it is yet a 
means for developing all the latent talents servicable for the cul- 
ture of the race.'V It is true that the refinement of taste pushed 
to idealization, and the luxury of science a,s affording food for 
pride, arouses a number of insatiable animal inclinations. Yet 
we cannot mistake the purpose of nature to win us away from 
the rudeness and violence of these inclinations which belong to 
our animality, and to make way for the development of our 

a Section 83. 

b Note to Section 83. 

c Section $3. 



34 

humanity. The beautiful arts and sciences win us in large meas- 
ure from the tyranny of sense propensions, and thus prepare us 
for the lordship in which reason alone shall have authority. But 
there is plainly also a limit to nature's ability to help us directly 
or indirectly when the culture of our powers and our passions 
is viewed as the final end of our existence and purpose on earth. 
In spite of all that nature can do towards the cultivating of our 
powers and the taming of our passions there is a sense in which 
it fails to satisfy our sensuous desires. It is at this point that 
we are made to feel an aptitude for higher purposes which lie 
hidden in us. 

We are thus pointed, by this inner aptitude for something 
which nature cannot supply, or for which it cannot prepare us, 
to something beyond nature as the final end which we must 
ascribe to the existence of the world. "There remains then noth- 
ing but the value which we ourselves give our life, * * * 
through what we do purposively in ,such independence of na- 
ture that the existence of nature itself can only be a purpose 
under this condition. "a It is only as we view man as he repre- 
sents himself as an absolutely unconditioned end to himself 
(which ijS not the case in the proposed ends of happiness and 
culture) that we are obliged to regard him as an end to other 
things. Man as a noumenon, man as a pure moral agent, is an 
end which is good in itself, and not only good for something 
else. It is man then as a pure moral being, — man under moral 
laws, laws which he himself givers to himself categorically, who 
must be viewed as the final end of the world. As a being under 
moral laws, which he himself gives to himself, he is an end to 
himself without the need of anything further as the condition 
of its possibility. Here he ceases to be a contingent being. As 
the unconditioned cause of the moral obligation imposed upon 
himself he is an end to himself and at the same time also obliged 
to consider himself as an end to all nature. And nature which 
is unfriendly to man's happiness is consistent with this moral 

a Note to section 83. 



35 

end which man sets for himself. The very discord of nature 
with the natural man and of the natural man with himself be- 
comes a means for the development of the spiritual man. "We 
have in the moral law which enjoins on us in a practical point 
of view the application of our powers to the accomplishment of 
this end a ground for assuming its possibility and practicability, 
and consequently too a nature of things harmonious with it. 
Pence we have a moral ground for thinking in the world also 
a final purpose of creation."a Nature must thu,s be viewed 
as teleologically related to man under moral laws in spite of the 
fact that nature cannot be experienced or perceived as an or- 
ganism. In other words, in "man as the subject of morality 
we have a final purpose to which the whole of nature is teleo- 
logically subordinated." * * * "Without man the whole crea- 
tion would be a mere waste, in vain, and without final purpose; 
and it is in man's good will that he can have an absolute worth, 
and in reference to which the world can have a final purpose."^ 

And also from a pure practical point of view, i. e., for the 
sake of realizing that which the moral law demands of him as 
end to himself, man must view nature as adaptable to said end, 
for "a final purpose in man proposing a priori a duty and a nature 
without any final purpose in which this purpose in man may be 
actualized would involve a contradiction." And, finally, to make 
possible the complete good of man, or the realization of happi- 
ness which is his end as a natural being in harmony with moral 
perfection which is his end as a moral being, he must postulate 
a God through whose power and wisdom and goodness this 
otherwise impossible thing can be thought of as possible. 

There are two things, therefore, that must be explained 
teleologically, viz., life, or organic nature; and collective nature 
viewed in relation to man under moral lows. 



a Section 88. 
b Section 86. 



II. 

OUR MENTAL NEED OF THE TELEOLOGICAL PRIN- 
CIPLE AND THE LEGITIMATE USE THAT 
CAN BE MADE OF IT. 

Sections 61, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 80 

and 81, cf. also Introduction to the Critique of Judgment, 

sections IV and V. 

The production of material things and their forms must 
be judged to be possible according to merely mechanical laws. 
Our reason demands this because such laws alone agree with 
the principles on which knowledge and experience are possible. 
But we have also seen in the preceding discussion that some 
products of material nature (e. g., organic objects) cannot be 
judged to be possible according to merely mechanical laws. All 
the known laws of mechanism fail to make them intelligible. 
Here is an apparent antinomy, and unless we subject the matter 
to a careful criticism our explanation will become involved in 
a real and insoluble antinomy. If we confuse the above maxims 
with constitutive principles of the possibility of objects and 
say: all production of material things is possible according to 
merely mechanical laws, and admit, on the other hand, that 
some productions of material things are not possible according 
to merely mechanical laws, we have a contradiction of prin- 
ciples, and one of the two propositions must be false. In this 
latter case we have no antinomy of the judgment, but a conflict 
in the legislation of reason itself. We have erred in this case 
in making reason determine the possibility of things a priori, 

36 



which is not possible according to mere empirical laws of na- 
ture. We have erred in bringing the determinant judgment 
itself into an antinomy, or into a conflict of its principles, which 
ia not possible, for the determinant judgment has no autonomy. 
It is strictly heteronomous; i. e., it subsumes the particular only 
under the universal principles given it by the understanding, 
and thus it cannot fall into a discord with itself. But the re- 
flective judgment is autonomous. It indeed must subsume the 
particular under the universal principles of the understanding as 
far as possible. But as we have already seen, it also subsumes 
under a law which it gives to itself. Where we are quite in 
want of a law under which the particular can be subsumed, 
as is the case in our judging of organisms, the judgment (be- 
cause it must always ,seek to find the universal) must, in such 
case, serve as a principle for itself. But in this latter case "we 
have a mere subjective principle for the purpose of employing 
our cognitive faculties, i. e., for reflecting upon a class of ob- 
ject^." * * * "Therefore, in reference to such cases the re- 
flective judgment has its maxims, — necessary maxims, on be- 
half of the cognition of natural laws in experience, in order to 
attain by them to concepts, even concepts of reason; since it 
has absolute need of such in order to learn merely to cognize 
nature according to its empirical laws. "a Between these maxims 
of the reflective judgment there may be a conflict, and conse- 
quently an antinomy. But we must observe that the conflict is 
not between the principles of the determinant judgment, or be- 
tween constitutive principles of the understanding, but only be- 
tween maxims of the reflective judgment. The principle which 
the reflective judgment gives to itself for the sake of looking 
upon these objects of nature, which are inexplicable according 
to the laws of mechanism, serves merely as a guide to our re- 
flection upon these objects. It does not pretend to tell us any- 
thing about these objects themselves, much less to determine 
them according to this principle. It still leaves them open to 
all mechanical grounds of explanation and does not withdraw 



a Section 69. 



38 

from the world of sense and ground them determinately in the 
supersensible. "All appearance of an antinomy between maxim,s 
of the mechanical and teleological methods of explanation rests 
therefore on this: that we confuse a fundamental proposition 
of the reflective judgment with one of the determinant judg- 
ment, and the autonomy of the first (which has mere subjec- 
tive validity for the use of reason in re,spect of particular laws) 
with the heteronomy of the second which must regulate itself 
according to laws given it by the understanding. "a 

Teleology then is a matter only for the reflective and not 
for the determinant judgment. And from what has already 
been said it is clear that the idea of design is only a guide to 
us in our reflection upon certain enigmatical objects of our 
experience, but not a principle for determining these objects. 
Thus the faculty of judgment gives the law to itself and not 
to nature. "It is one thing to say: the production of certain 
things of nature or that of collective nature is possible only 
through a cause which determines it,self to action according to 
design; and quite another to say, / can, according to the pe- 
culiar constitution of my cognitive faculties, judge concerning 
the possibility of these things and their production, in no other 
fashion than according to design; i. e., a Being who is pro- 
ductive in a way analogous to the causality of an intelligence. 
In the former case I wish to establish something concerning 
the object, and am bound to establish the objective reality of 
an assumed concept; in the latter case, reason only determines 
the use of my cognitive faculties, conformably to their pecu- 
liarities and to the essential conditions of their range and lim- 
its. Thus the former principle is an objective proposition for 
the determinant judgment, and the latter merely a subjective 
proposition for the reflective judgment; i. e., a maxim which 
reason prescribes to it."& 

It is clear then that teleology, which is only a subjective 
principle of the reflective judgment, can give us no knowledge 

a Section 71. 
b Section 75. 



39 

of objects and, when used as a critical principle, does not pre- 
tend to do so. It simply applies an idea of reason to those 
things of nature which are mechanically inexplicable for the 
sake of making them intelligible to an understanding like ours. 
We do not pretend to deal with the concept dogmatically as 
though it were conformable to law for the determinant judg- 
ment, but we shall deal with it only critically, and then only 
as a critical principle of the reflective judgment, for we shall 
"consider it only in reference to our cognitive faculties and con- 
sequently to the subjective condition^ of thinking it, without 
undertaking to decide anything about its object."a The prin- 
ciple merely expresses a mental need and in asserting our need 
of this teleological method of explanation in the case of cer- 
tain things, which are accidental in view of mechanical laws, we 
do not thereby pretend to settle anything dogmatically in regard 
to the hidden inner relation that may exist between mechanism 
and purposiveness, or to decide whether mechanism may or 
may not be able to produce these enigmatical products. All 
that we wish to say is that it is not possible for an understand- 
ing like ours so to see things. 

The Call for Teleological Explanation Comes From a Defect 
in the Inmost Nature of our Mental Faculties^. An impartial crit- 
icism makes evident the fact that we, because of the nature and lim- 
itation of our mental faculties, need another principle to supple- 
ment the deficiency of the idea of mechanical' causation though 
only as a principle for reflection upon and not for the deter- 
mination of objects. The very nature of our cognitive facul- 
ties compels us to bring to our aid this teleological principle 
where the mechanical principle fails to account for the exist- 
ence and form of a product of nature. The call for this prin- 
ciple has its ground in the difference between our understanding 
and our reason. The reason is a faculty of principles and pro- 
ceeds in its ultimate demands to the unconditioned. But our 
understanding can proceed only by means of perceptions which 



a Section 74. 



40 

are supplied by the senses. The understanding is therefore 
plainly limited and cannot keep pace with the reason. And since 
there is this difference between the understanding and reason 
as mental faculties there is also a distinction for us between 
what \s actual and what is possible. The understanding, by 
means of perceptions, gives us only what is actual. It cannot 
pretend to anything more. But we can think what is possible. 
And since we cannot know the ground for the unity of the 
mechanism of nature and those products which, in view of these 
Iaw,s, are accidental, we must, because of this limitation of our 
understanding, think the possibility of this union. It is only 
when we reduce nature and her products to a unity of prin- 
ciples that it becomes intelligible to ourselves. But this unity 
can be thought only according to the idea of design as prescrib- 
ed by reason. Our reason makes us conscious of the defect of 
cur understanding, which is merely discursive, and must pro- 
ceed from the analytic-universal to the particular in determin- 
ing objects. Reason however thinks the possibility of an un- 
derstanding which is intuitive, and can proceed from the syn- 
thetic-universal to the particular, and for which therefore there 
is no distinction between possibility and actuality, and for which 
there is no accidental character in the particular. The reason 
therefore for our applying the idea of design to certain enig- 
matical products of nature is clearly due to the constitution and 
limitation of our finite intelligence. Rea,son, which (as well as 
the understanding) must seek for a universal principle under 
which to subsume these particular products, but failing *to 
receive one from the understanding, and receiving no instruc- 
tions from the objects themselves, must, in such case, give the 
principle to itself. This principle can be none other than that of 
a designing intelligence which uses mechanical means to bring 
about its purpose. But we must not forget that this idea of 
design is only a ,subjective principle which does not establish the 
reality of its assumed concept, and holds only for an intelligence 
limited like ours. We must be careful not to confuse the me- 
chanical and the teleological principles of explanation, for they 



41 

are not both valid for determining objects of nature. Teleology 
is only an heuristic principle, — only a way in which we are ob- 
liged to look at nature. It is indeed a way that we must look at 
nature, but it cannot assure us that we will find what we are 
looking for. It is a necessary principle of investigation only 
for a limited intelligence like ours. In other words it is only 
because of the limitation of our finite intelligence that we are 
obliged to call to our aid this teleological method of explana- 
tion. 

The reason for the controversies in dogmatic philosophy 
Ov'er the existence of final causes in nature is that its devotees 
never subjected our mental faculties to a thoroughgoing criti- 
cism. They have not learned to distinguish between the under- 
standing, which is limited by sensibility, and reason, which is 
not thus limited; and between the determinant and the reflec- 
tive aspects of the judgment. Four schools have expressed 
their views on the subject. Two have held to the idealism of 
design, viz., that it is only a subjective illusion; and two have 
held to the realism of design, viz., that there is something in 
nature corresponding to our idea of design. Among the ideal- 
ists we may mention Democritus and Epicurus, who deny that 
there is anything in nature that is not mechanically caused. 
They reduce all our teleological judgments to an illusion but, 
having never subjected the matter to a careful criticism, they 
have failed to give any explanation whatever of the illusion, 
or of the mental facts which give rise to it. Spinoza reduces 
all apparent adaptation of things to each other to a unity of 
ground or substance. But as Spinoza denies all intelligence to 
this substratum his position is nothing more than fatalism. The 
unity of purpose which we are compelled to seek requires more 
than the reduction of all things to one cau,se; it requires an in- 
telligent cause. Among those who hold to the realism of pur- 
posiveness are the hylozoists and the theists. The former con- 
ceive of matter as being alive, or of nature as animated by a 
world-soul. They would deduce the purposivene,ss which seems 
to belong to organized nature from the life of matter. But 



42 

matter is in its essence inert and lifeless. We find life first in 
organized beings, and to explain the life of organized beings by 
reference to life in matter, whereas it is only in organized be- 
ings themselves that we find life, is obviously reasoning in a 
circle. Theism alone of these schools explains the purposive- 
ness which we find in organized nature adequately by referring 
it to an intelligent cause of nature. No other reference explains 
it at all. But theism errs in dogmatically asserting that because 
we cannot explain the appearance of design by mechanical 
causes it is objectively impossible to do so; and it errs, fur- 
thermore, in asserting dogmatically that because we (i. e., a 
finite intelligence like ours) are compelled to use the design ar- 
gument to account for organic nature there is no other way of 
explaining it. Theism fails to see that the fault is with our 
finite understanding. 

It is evident that the errors of these dogmaticians are due 
to the fact that they have not subjected our mental faculties to 
a thorough criticism. They have all failed to see that teleologi- 
cal explanation pimply expresses a mental need, or a deficiency 
in our understanding. All that we can say is: that for an in- 
telligence like ours there is no other way of explaining these 
products of nature than by means of the idea of design. But 
we do not in this way pretend to settle the question as to the ul- 
timate nature of these things in themselves; or whether me- 
chanism and teleology may or may not in the unknown ground 
of nature be united in one principle. There may be an Intuitive 
Understanding for whom mechanism and design coalesce, but 
we are sure that they do not do so for us. That there is a 
Being with such an understanding is a problematical idea for 
our reason, but unattainable for our understanding. We do 
know that no Newton will be able to make comprehensible to 
en understanding like ours a single blade of grass without re- 
course to the idea of design. We must absolutely deny this in- 
sight to men. We are therefore driven by the limitation of our 
understanding to guide our reflection upon such produces by 
means of the idea of design. But a critique teaches us not to 



43 

become dogmatic, but to speak cautiously, for "how can we 
know that in nature, if we could penetrate to the principle by 
which it specifies the universal laws known to us, there cannot 
lie hidden (in its mere mechanism) the sufficient ground of the 
possibility of organized beings without supposing any design in 
their production." a The reason we cannot do this is because of 
the limitation of our cognitive faculties, which we have pointed 
out, and for beings like ourselves, limited as we are in our un- 
derstanding, the teleological principle remains as a necessary 
heuristic principle. But we must not use the principle in a dog- 
matic way as though it were a constitutive principle of the un- 
derstanding determining nature in a positive way. "In order, 
therefore, to remove the suspicion of the slightest assumption, — 
as if we wanted to mix with our grounds of cognition some- 
thing not belonging to Physic at all, viz., a spiritual cause, — 
we speak, indeed, in the teleology of nature as if the purposive- 
ness in it were designed, but in ,such a way that this design is 
ascribed to nature, i. e., to matter. Now in this way there can 
be no misunderstanding, because no design in the proper mean- 
ing of the word can be assigned to inanimate nature. We give 
notice that this word here only expresses the principle of the 
reflective and not of the determinant judgment, and ,so is to 
introduce no particular ground of causality; but only adds for 
the use of reason a different kind of investigation from that ac- 
cording to mechanical laws, in order to supplement the deficiency 
of the latter even for empirical research into all particular laws 
of nature."& 

The scientific use of the teleological principle. * * * 

* * * *We have seen then that "it is not in the 

concept of nature but quite apart from it that we can hope 

to find the least ground a priori" for this teleological principle. 

It is only a borrowed concept, and, therefore a foreign principle 



a Section 75. 
b Section 68. 



44 

and so may not be introduced into our .scientific investigations 
of nature and her products in a determinate way. "Science must 
not transgress its bounds in order to introduce into itself as a 
domestic principle that, to whose concept no experience can be 
commensurate, upon which we are entitled to venture only after 
the completion of natural science."a It is praiseworthy for 
comparative anatomy to go through all the great kingdom of 
organized beings, seeking (by means of mechanism) whether 
there is discoverable in it any trace of system which points to 
a common principle of production. "Science must not let slip 
the mechanical principle" so far as thi,s explains at all, for it 
is only in this way that our actual knowledge of nature is at 
all enhanced. "ThijS is done in order to restrict the study of 
nature mechanically considered to that which we can so subject 
to observation or experience that we are able to produce it our- 
selves as nature does, or at best by similar laws. For we see 
into a thing completely only in so far as we can make it in ac- 
cordance with our concepts.''^ The only concept that enables 
us to see into organic nature is design. 

It may seem possible by mere mechanism to infer any pro- 
duct of nature from man, through the polype, on down through 
mosses and lichens, from crude matter itself. In this way it 
becomes the task of the archeologist of nature to go back to 
the remaining traces of nature's earliest revolutions and, accord- 
ing to known or supposed mechanical laws, to trace the genesis 
of this great family of creatures (i. e., organisms). But how- 
ever far we may go back on the basis of mechanism we are 
not able to explain away the difference between the organic and 
the inorganic, and thus to reduce design to mechanism. The 
deficiency of our understanding prevents this. "Ultimately we 
are still obliged to attribute to this universal mother (nature) 
an organization which is adapted for the production and main- 
tenance of all these creatures; otherwise we should be unable 



a Section 68. 
b Section 68. 



45 

to explain the possibility of the purposive form of the products 
of the animal and the vegetable kingdom." * * * "We have 
therefore only pushed back the ground of explanation a stage 
further; nor can we pretend to have made the genesis of these 
two kingdoms intelligible without resorting to final causes." * * 
"If the naturalist will not waste his labor in his examination 
irto the nature of objects which have to be considered as ends 
of nature, or organisms, he will be obliged always to start 
with the presupposition of an original organic principle, which 
uses the mechanism of nature to produce new organized forms, 
or to develop the organic forms already produced into new 
shapes."a 

The Two Principles Must be Associated in Our Efforts to 
Comprehend Nature. — If we only bear in mind that 
mechanism is a principle of the determinant judgment 
and that teleology is only a subjective principle of the 
reflective judgment we will see that the two principles 
are not contradictory, and that, from the standpoint of our lim- 
ited intelligence, neither of them can be disregarded in our ef- 
forts to understand the whole of nature. "In a thing that we 
must judge as a natural purpose we can no doubt try all the 
known and yet to be discovered laws of mechanical production, 
and can even hope to make good progress thereby; but we can 
never get rid of the call for a quite different ground of produc- 
tion for the possibility of such a product, viz., the causality by 
means of purposes. Absolutely no human reason (finite like 
ours) can hope to understand the production of even a blade of 
grass by mere mechanical laws. As regards the possibility of 
such an object, the teleological connection of cause and effect 
is quite indispensible for the judgment even for studying it by 
the clue of experience."^ In the .study of these organized 
products of nature, the two principles not only must be em- 
ployed together, but the mechanical must be subordinated to 



o Section 80. 
b Section 77. 



46 

the teleological. This is so because our understanding is clearly 
bounded, and can proceed only according to a given principle, 
while reason, seeking for the unity of the jseeming disparate 
principles of production, passes on to the unconditioned ground 
of these products according to a principle which it gives to it- 
self. 

It is evident then that for an understanding like ours these 
two disparate principles must be associated in our efforts to 
explain a natural purpose. We have seen that mechanism can- 
not enable us to think the possibility of an organized being and 
therefore must be supplemented by the principle of design; and, 
in such case, must be subordinated to the latter principle even 
in view of our simple experience of ,such an object. But just 
as little, on the other hand, can teleology consider such an or- 
ganism as a product of nature if the mechanism of the latter 
be not associated with the former as the instrument of a cause 
working designedly. Teleology may not remove such an ob- 
ject from nature, for this would place it out,side the limits of 
knowledge altogether. And it is precisely as a product of na- 
ture, accidental as regards the known laws of nature, that an or- 
ganism obliges us to call to our aid the teleological principle as a 
way of explaining it to ourselves. The two disparate princi- 
ples must, therefore, be associated in our efforts to explain the 
whole of nature. Because of the evident limitations of our cog- 
nitive faculties we may not disregard either the one or the 
other. 

The Unification of These Principles Must be Thought of as 
Grounded in the Supersensible. — The unification of these prin- 
ciples, which it is possible and even necessary for us to think, lies in 
the Supersensible, and can, therefore, not be comprehended by us. 
None of the dogmatic attempts to explain the unification of these 
principles in the production of a living thing of nature is, for 
this reason, satisfactory. Occasionalism postulates a miracle at 
each birth. The Supersensible intervenes directly in the pro- 



47 

duction of each new living thing. But in this way all nature 
is lost, and no one who takes any interest in philosophy may 
advocate such a theory. Pre-established Harmony has been 
advocated in two different forms : on the one hand, as Individual 
Preformation, and on the other, as Generic Preformation. The 
former differs from Occasionalism only in this respect: that it 
supposes the embryos of all individuals to exist in the first 
parents. Nature is viewed as self-evolving but not as self-pro- 
ducing; and organic beings are educts and not products. The 
doctrine of Generic Preformation is vastly superior to the other 
two, "for in respect of the things which we can represent as 
possible only according to the causality of purposes, at least as 
it concerns their propagation, this theory regards nature as 
icff -producing, not merely self -evolving. And thus with the 
least expenditure of the supernatural leaves to nature all that 
follows after a first beginning. "a 

The fact is that the union of these two principles of causa- 
tion, which reason obliges us to think, lies beyond our knowledge. 
An understanding that is not discursive like ours, but intuitive 
(i. e., an understanding that can proceed from the synthetic- 
universal to the particular and thus can perceive the whole be- 
fore the parts) can see the two principles as actually one. The 
best that we can do with our limited faculties is to associate 
together in our method of explanation these two disparate but 
mutually supplementary principles of causation. If we refuse 
to do this some part of nature must, for us, remain unexplained. 
And on the other hand, if we confuse the idea of design, which 
is a purely subjective principle of the reflective judgment, with 
the constitutive principles of the determinant judgment we will 
bring about a conflict of principles, and our explanation will 
become involved in a hopeless contradiction. 



a Section 81. 



III. 



THE THEORETIC LIMITATIONS AND THE MORAL 
VALIDITY OF THE TELEOLOGICAL ASSUMP- 
TONS. (Sections 79, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90 and 91. 
cf. also section 75.) 



We have seen from the preceding discussion that the prin- 
ciple of teleology has a legitimate scientific use as a guiding 
thread to the investigation of nature for an understanding like 
ours. But the principle is also necessarily limited. It is only a 
subjective maxim for the reflective judgment, and as such can 
give us no real knowledge whatever of objects. It cannot say 
positively that organisms are caused according to ideas of a 
supersensible intelligence. It can only say: "because of the 
limitation of our cognitive faculties we cannot understand these 
products of nature after any other fashion." What these ob- 
jects are in themselves remains just as undetermined as ever. 
They are not in the least made comprehensible in themselves ob- 
jectively, but only to our limited intelligence. Teleology pre- 
scribes the law only to ourselves and not to nature. It has no 
theoretical value whatever for the understanding or for the 
determinant judgment. It is not valid as scientific doctrine. 
Our Critique has shown that it is only a principle subjectively as- 
sumed for the sake of bridging over the chasm between the 
defect in our understanding, which is sensibly limited, and our 
reason, which passes on to the unconditioned. As such it mere- 

48 



49 

ly indicates the way that we must look at things which lie be- 
yond the limits of our understanding without telling us anything 
positive about these things. 

Neither can teleology determine any thing positively, or ob- 
jectively, concerning its own assumptions, "for if things be sub- 
sumed under a concept that is merely problematical, its synthetic 
predicates can furnish only problematical judgments of the ob- 
ject, whether affirmative or negative; and we do not know 
whether we are judging about something or nothing."a Tele- 
ology can, therefore, not say positively: "there is a God who is 
the ground and cause of nature." It can only say that an un- 
derstanding like ours can comprehend organic nature only ac- 
cording to the assumed idea that it is caused by an Intelligence 
which uses mechanical means to bring about an end set by rea- 
son. But the existence of this Intelligence is not guaranteed, 
much less its synthetic predicates, by the purely subjective ne- 
cessity of assuming it. The assumptions of design, as a special 
principle of causation, and of a God who produces things in 
nature according to design, remain mere maxims of the reflec- 
tive judgment. Physico-teleology therefore has as little deter- 
minate value for theology as it has for natural science. It can 
serve, at best, only a,s a propaedeutic to theology. Being valid 
therefore as doctrine neither in natural science nor in theology, 
and belonging as a domestic principle neither to theoretic nor 
practical philosophy, it is plain that it belongs only to Critique, 
and then only to a Critique of the reflective judgment. It is 
limited to the reflective judgment, and is theoretically valid 
only as a guiding thread to our investigation of that part of na- 
ture which is incomprehensible to the understanding according 
to its necessary laws. 

The Teleological Assumptions Cannot be Proved. — 
The first requisite of a proof is that it convinces 
or convicts us. And the proof that is intended to convince can 



a Section 74. 



50 

be of two kinds: either deciding what the object is in itself, 
or what it is for us according to our necessary rational principles 
of judgment. The former kind of proof is based on adequate 
principles of the determinant judgment, and the theoretic 
grounds of such proof resolve themselves into (1) Logically 
Strict Syllogisms of Reason; (2) Conclusions According to Anal- 
°9y> (3) Probabje Opinion; (4) Hypothesis. The question in 
this connection is : can the teleological assumptions be proved on 
any of these theoretic grounds? 

(1). Our Critique has made this one thing clear, viz., that 
there is absolutely no cognition of this Supersensible Being since 
no intuition that is possible for us corresponds to the concept 
of a Being that is to be sought beyond nature. We cannot logi- 
cally prove the infinite from our experience of the finite as if 
the latter were the more comprehensive idea. But in this mat- 
ter only the finite is given in our experience from which we 
would have to deduce the infinite which is a logical impossibility. 
The teleological assumptions can therefore not be proved ac- 
cording to strict syllogisms of reason. 

(2) "Analogy is the identity of the relation between 
causes and effects, notwithstanding the specific difference of the 
things or those properties in them which contain the cause of 
like effects." * * * Thus "we can indeed think one of two 
dissimilar things, even in the very point of their dissimilarity 
in accordance with the analogy of the other, but we cannot, 
from that wherein they are dissimilar, conclude from the one 
to the other by analogy, i. e., transfer from the one to the other 
this sign of specific distinction, "a For example, we compare 
the building operations of beasts with the artificial works 
of man and note that instinct in the beast has the same relation 
to the effects produced that reason in man has to its effects. 
From the similarity of the mode of operation of beasts to that 
of man we may quite rightly conclude according to analogy 
that beasts, too, act in accordance with representations, and that 



Section 90. 



51 

they are not mere machines like Descartes ( supposed. Our right 
to do so consists in the sameness of ground for reckoning beasts 
(as living beings sensibly conditioned) in respect of such deter- 
mination in the same genus as man so far as we can externally 
compare them. But here the argument from analogy must 
cease. We may not conclude that because man uses reason 
(something which we know) in h^s artificial works, the beast 
must do the same (something which we do not know), and 
call this a conclusion from analogy. Just so we can think, ac- 
cording to the analogy of an understanding, the causality of a 
Supreme World-cause, by comparing its purposive products, 
with the artificial works of man. But we cannot conclude ac- 
cording to analogy to tho,se properties in it which are in man, 
because here the principle of the possibility of such a method 
entirely fails, viz., the sufficient reason for reckoning the Su- 
preme Being in the same genus as man. The one is always 
sensibly conditioned and the other is always supersensible. The 
two not only belong to two absolutely distinct classes of beings, 
but they are absolutely different types of understanding, and 
we cannot transfer from the one to the other that wherein they 
are absolutely different. The argument from analogy is there- 
fore not valid here. 

(3) Arguments from probability, or probable opinion, can- 
not be admitted here, for "probability is part of a certainty pos- 
sible in a certain series of grounds, the insufficient ground of 
which must be capable of completion." * * * And "since, 
as determining grounds of one and the same judgment, they 
must be of the same kind, for otherwise they would not consti- 
tute a whole, one part of them cannot lie within the bounds 
of possible experience and the other outside of all possible ex- 
perience."a Now it is quite evident that empirical grounds of 
proof, such as are available for us in a physieo-teleology, can 
never lead to the supersensible, and that which is lacking in 
this series can never be completed by any possible experience. 

a Section 90. 



52 

Wie therefore never approach nearer to the supersensible, or 
to a cognition of it, by any sensible experience and so 
can form no legitimate theoretic opinion of it. 

(4). If an hypothesis is to serve for the explanation of 
the possibility of a given phenomenon, its possibility must, at 
least, be completely certain. But in the case of a Supreme 
Being, none of the conditions requisite for a cognition as re- 
gards that in it which rests upon intuition are given, and so 
the sole criterion of possibility that remains for us is the mere 
fact that it can be thought without contradiction ; but this proves 
nothing in regard to the object itself. There is therefore not 
the least theoretic proof for the Being of God, or for the tele- 
ological assumptions in general, as objective realities. 

If we now change our point of view and look merely to 
the way in which anything can be an object of knowledge for us, 
then our concept will not be concerned with objects as they are 
in themselves but merely with our cognitive faculties and the 
use they can make of a given representation. From this point 
of view the question is not in regard to the possibility of the 
thing, but is rather in regard to the possibility of our knowledge 
of the thing that is represented. The question then is: if there 
is such a Supreme Being as we have assumed, is knowledge 
of such a Being possible for us? 

Cognizable things are of three kinds: (1) Things of Opinion. 
Objects of mere rational ideas, which for theoretical knowledge 
cannot be represented in any possible experience, (as we have 
already seen) are so far not cognizable things, and we can form 
no opinion of them. To cognize a thing and form an opinion 
of it, it must, at least, not be impossible to experience it. For 
example, the ether of the new physics, an elastic fluid pervad- 
ing all matter, is a mere thing of opinion, yet is such that, if 
cur senses would be sharpened to the highest degree, it could 
be perceived. Or to assume the existence of rational inhabitants 
of other planets is a legitimate thing for opinion, for if we 
could get near enough, which is itself possible, we could decide 



53 

by experience whether this is so or not. But it will never be 
possible under any sensible conditions to experience the assump- 
tions of teleology. 

(2). Another class of things cognizable by us are things 
of fact; i. e., things that can be proved either through pure 
reason or through sensible experience. But we have already 
seen that the teleological assumptions cannot be deduced logical- 
ly from universal principles, for we have only particular and 
empirical principles given from which to deduce these assump- 
tions. Neither can they be experienced in any sensible way 
?nd thus plainly cannot be classed among things of fact. We 
must deny, therefore, on valid epistemological grounds that we 
could have any knowledge of this Supreme Being even if there 
were one. 

(3). Only one more class of cognizable objects remains, 
and these are objects of faith, or objects "which in reference to 
the use of pure practical reason that is in conformity with duty 
must be thought a priori (whether as consequences or as 
grounds), but which are transcendent for its theoretical use. "a 
To this class of objects the teleological assumptions belong. An 
impartial criticism, therefore, has reduced these assumptions to 
a mere matter of moral faith from a pure practical point of 
view. 

Now "faith is the moral attitude of reason as to belief in 
that which is unattainable by theoretical cognition. It is there- 
lore the permanent principle of the mind, to assume as true, 
on account of the obligation in reference to it, that which it is 
necessary to presuppose as the condition of the possibility of 
the highest moral final purpose, although its possibility or im- 
possibility be alike impossible for us to see into."& Such faith 
"as trust in the attainment of a design, the promotion of which 
is a duty, but the possibility of the fulfillment of which is not 



a.. Section 91. 
b Section 91. 



54 

to be comprehended by us is quite moral." * * * "And that 
man is morally unbelieving who denies all validity to rational 
ideas because there is wanting a theoretical ground for their 
reality."a. Therefore the teleological assumptions, though they 
cannot give us anything determinately concerning objects and 
are thus plainly limited in their relation to both science and 
theology, are nevertheless valid for moral faith. 

Reason enjoins upon us a priori the duty of promoting our 
highest happiness in harmony with our moral worthiness to be 
happy. This duty rings clear for all rational creatures. This 
moral command is given regardles ( s of any and all empirical 
conditions. But we find nothing in nature that will help us or 
that will even encourage us in the fulfillment of this duty. 
There is therefore a strict moral necessity to assume the world 
to be that kind of system in which thi^s highest end of reason 
can be thought of as possible. But to assume the world to be 
such a system necessitates the further assumption of a God 
through whose power, and wisdom, and goodness this is made 
possible. There is therefore a pure moral reason "to assume 
God only to furnish practical reality to a purpose which reason, 
without any such presupposition, enjoins upon us a priori to 
bring about with all our power,s."& 

But we must not fail to see that this moral necessity for 
assuming God is limited to a purely practical point of view. The 
existence and the obligatoriness of the moral law do not de- 
pend upon the existence of God. If there were no God "every 
rational being would yet have to cognize himself as straitly bound 
by the precepts of morality, for its laws are formal and com- 
mand unconditionally." c Reason gives the law of duty to us 
categorically through freedom. Neither will our denial of God 
exempt us from our obligation to the moral law. If, because 
of the weakness of the speculative arguments, and still further 



a Section 91. 
b Section 87. 
c Section 87. 



55 

because of many irregularities in nature, a man becomes per- 
suaded that there is no God, he i,s still under the imperative of 
the moral law, and will be a contemptible creature even in his 
own eyes if from such a disposition he will feel himself free 
to transgress the commands of the moral law. This law needs 
no other ground for it,s existence and obligatoriness than its own 
unconditioned, inner necessity. No! lack of faith in God will 
not allow us to give up our faith in the moral law, neither will 
it exempt us from unconditional obligation to it. 

But in such case there is one thing that we must give up, 
viz., the hope that the final end of the moral law can be realized 
by us under present empirical conditions. The end of the moral 
law can be attained only if there is a God. Suppose the case 
of a righteous man (Spinoza, for example), who believes neither 
in God nor a future life, but who, because of his reverence for 
the moral law, would endeavor to practice it. He desires no 
advantage to himself either in this world or in another. He 
wishes disinterestedly to establish the good to which this holy 
law directs all his powers. But his efforts are bounded. From 
nature he receives no regular harmony or accordance with the 
purpose that he feels himself obliged to accomplish. Deceit, 
violence, and envy will always surround him, and nature, which 
respects not his worthiness to be happy, subjects him to all the 
evils of want, disease, and untimely death, just like the beasts 
and the evil men around him. So it will be until one wide 
crrave engulfs them all together, honest or not, it makes no dif- 
ference, and thus throws him back, — who is able to consider 
himself a final purpose of creation, — into the abyss of the pur- 
poseless chaos of matter from which all were drawn. Under 
such conditions the purpose which the moral law enjoins upon 
us to bring about with all our powers must be given up as 
hopeless. If the end imposed by the moral law shall not be 
defeated we must assume a Being who is the moral author and 
governor of the world. "Thus is found a pure moral ground 
of practical reason for assuming this cause (i. e., God) in order 



56 

that we may no more regard this effort of reason as quite idle, 
and so run the risk of abandoning it from weariness. "a Thus 
it is quite plain that the assumption of God as the intelligent 
creator and the moral governor of the world has its validity 
ultimately grounded in a pure practical point of view. 



a Section 86, remark. 






PART THREE. 



AN APPRECIATION AND A CRITICISM OF THE 



DOCTRINE AS ELABORATED 



BY THE AUTHOR 



AN APPRECIATION AND A CRITICISM OF THE DOC- 
TRINE AS ELABORATED BY THE AUTHOR. 

It was shown in Part One of this dissertation that Kant discov- 
ered a new phase of purposiveness in his critical study of the 
Beautiful. In our cognition of an object, Kant argues, there 
is always felt a discord between the subject who knows and 
the object which he endeavors to know. There is something 
in the object which evades the subject. The two seem for- 
eign to each other as if they were not intended for each other. 
And in our efforts to cognize nature there is also felt a discord 
between understanding and sense. Our consciousness becomes 
divided between a consciousness of self as object and self as 
subject, and thus the unity of intelligence itself becomes lost. 
But in our sense of the Beautiful there is immediately felt an 
agreement, or a pleasurable harmony, between ourselves and the 
object. It seems as if the object were designed for us. This 
feeling of harmony between subject and object is so immediate, 
and the greeting which the spirit gives the object is met with 
such a ready response that Kant here finds an a priori ground 
for assuming a hidden, inner union of that which had been 
sharply separated in the former Critiques. In this feeling of 
harmony between the subject and the object the two worlds of 
our experience approach each other, and the divided conscious- 
ness becomes reunited. In the sense of the Beautiful we immed- 
iately feel a union which we must think (but which we cannot 
know) in our effort to cognize nature. But the ultimate ground 
of the union which we feel must be in a designing understand- 
ing. Having thus discovered this new phase of the principle of 
design in the purely subjective sense of the Beautiful, he now 
applies it in an objective sense to those objects of nature which 

59 



60 

cannot be accounted for by means of the known mechanical 
laws. To make intelligible to ourselves these products, which 
are accidental according to all the laws known by the under- 
standing, we must think ^s their cause a designing Understand- 
ing which adapts nature to our intelligence. 

The way in which Kant found this principle of design is 
interesting but is really of little importance. In his former la- 
bors he had separated the sensible and the intelligible in such 
a way that the unity of consciousness was lost, and he was 
obliged to find some mediating principle. His mistake was in re- 
garding faculties and relations as foreign to each other which, 
in point of fact, are not foreign to each other. To say that 
there is a sharp antithesis between sense and understanding, 
and that there is a feeling of pain in our cognition of an ob- 
ject "as though it were not meant for us" to understand it, 
is overstating the case. On the contrary, there is an immed- 
iate and no uncertain feeling of harmony and union between 
ourselves and objective nature each time that we lay bare a 
new fact of nature, or that we discover a new law. In this 
cognition of nature there is a pleasurable feeling of union no 
less clear and distinct than that which we feel in our perception 
of a beautiful object. Nature does indeed invite u,s to an under- 
standing of its laws no less than it invites us to contemplate 
its beauty; and the kinship felt between ourselves and nature 
is just as close in the discovery of a new law as it is in the con- 
templation of a flower garden. Kant's mistake wa,s in sharply 
separating that which should not have been thus separated, and 
it was this which afterwards put him to the trouble of uniting 
it again. 

But regardless of the way in which Kant found his prin- 
ciple of design he is right in his contention that no man who 
earnestly desires to understand the whole of nature can deny 
the fact that mechanism proves itself inadequate to the task; 
and that its deficiency must be supplemented by some other 
principle of explanation, or else we must give up our effort to 



61 

understand our experience of nature in certain very important 
departments. If only one tree, or only a single blade of grass 
would be found among the inorganic objects of nature we 
would be obliged to depart from the idea of mere mechanism 
to make this thing intelligible to ourselves; for here is an 
object of nature which can by no means be accounted for on 
the ground of mechanical action and reaction of the parts prior 
to the whole. It is an object in which whole and parts, means 
and end, reciprocally presuppose each other; and the only way 
that we can make such an object intelligible to ourselve,s is by 
means of an idea which can be thought by reason. To account 
for one blade of grass among the rocks, and rivers, and moun- 
tains of the earth we are obliged to think as cause of nature 
2n Understanding which acts designedly. And, furthermore, 
in view of the origin and maintenance of the species we must 
ultimately resort in our explanation to the idea of a designed 
adaptation of nature. Although as Kant has shown, (in a 
way clearly anticipating Darwin) we may trace the origin of 
the species backward from man, down through mosses and lichens 
to the womb of nature herself, we must either stop here and 
confess that we cannot go any further, or else we must admit 
that nature is adapted to bring forth and maintain such crea- 
tures. This much Darwin himself frankly confesses in the 
closing paragraph of The Origin of Species. Science, in 
its explanation of the origin and development of things, does 
not need the teleological principle, for it deals only with particu- 
lar facts and relations which have had a beginning in time and 
occupy a place in space; and whatever is found in this way is 
dependent on something as its cause and will be followed by 
something else as its effect. The business of science is to trace 
out these causal relationships. But philosophic explanation be- 
gins where scientific investigation ends. The man who would 
make intelligible to ourselves the whole of things must find a 
unit of explanation under which all the manifold particulars 
must be subsumed; and this universal principle can be none 
other than the principle of design, or a designing understanding 



62 

which uses mechanical means to bring about an end set by rea- 
son. It is only in this way that the manifold particulars of 
nature can be reduced to the unity of our intelligence and thus 
become completely intelligible. Let mechanism do its work as 
far as it can; unaided by any other principle of explanation; 
but where it altogether fails to explain the given data, we must 
not, out of prejudice, or for any other reason, refuse to admit 
another principle to supplement its deficiency, provided only that 
this supplementary principle be not foreign to the understanding 
and in this way introduce something fanciful into our philosophy. 
This is just what Kant means to do in the Transcendental 
Dialectic when he admits of ideas of reason whose function 
is to arrange the infinite mas,s of our judgments and reduce 
them to a teleological system ; and still more in this present 
work when he applies the principle of design in an objective 
way to those products of nature wmich are inexplicable accord- 
ing to the empirical laws of nature. We must indeed admire 
the honesty and the absolute sincerity of Kant for permitting his 
system to return upon itself when he allows a priori principles 
of explanation in the Transcendental Dialectic which were de- 
nied in the Transcendental Analytic, and more especially when 
he indicates a certain theoretic value and scientific use of these 
principles in hi,s last work beyond that which was allowed in 
his former works. He shows us not only the limits but also the 
needs of the understanding. Our knowledge is limited to phe- 
nomena w r hich are mechanically caused, but the deficiency of 
this principle of explanation clearly expresses the need of an- 
other principle to supplement it for the ,sake of the completeness 
which reason demands. 

Our only quarrel with Kant on this point is that, when 
the last word is spoken, he refuses to allow anything more than 
a mere regulative value to this supplementary principle; or as 
he states it in this present work : a mere reflective value for 
the judgment. The principle is summoned only as a guide in 
our reflections where mechanism can no longer point out the 
way. But he dismisses his guide, after he has served his pur- 



63 

poses, with the charge that he is a "foreigner" who has no 
right to a place in exact philosophy. The sympathetic .student 
of Kant cannot help but feel that all through his last great work 
the earnest little man is chafing under the shackles which he 
himself forged in his earlier works. There he allows the ideas 
of reason as regulative principles, but stubbornly denies that 
they have any constitutive value whatever for the understand- 
ing. The border line of knowledge is distinctly drawn, and be- 
yond this line we must not trespass in the name of knowledge. 
In the Critique of Judgment he indeed more than once inti- 
mates a use of these principles in advance of what he allowed 
in the earlier works. In some portions of this present work he 
comes close to the position held in The Inaugural Dissertation 
that things in themselves have a content and can become an ob- 
ject of knowledge; but he immediately retreats again behind the 
breastworks of the Transcendental Analytic. Now it is his 
calling upon this principle of teleology where mechanism fails, 
and then refusing to make any real use of it that deserves our 
criticism. To offer us something with one hand and to with- 
draw it again with the other is not encouraging us in our hon- 
est pursuit of knowledge. To use the principle to help us over 
a difficulty and then throw it away as a useless thing, which 
is only intended to show us our ignorance, is playing with the 
problem. The teleological principle must have some constitu- 
tive or determinate value for us or else it deserves to be dis- 
carded altogether. With Kant we feel the call for a principle 
to supplement the deficiency of mechanism, and with him we 
feel that the principle of design is the only one that will do 
this ; but we would go beyond Kant and make some determinate 
use of it. And we feel that we have a perfect right to do so 
without introducing into our critical studies a fanciful principle 
which will prove disastrous to knowledge. 

The distinction which Kant emphasizes so energetically 
and repeats so persistently, viz., that the category of causation 
determines its class of objects and that the idea of design mere- 
ly indicates a way that our limited intelligence must look at 



64 

certain other objects; and that mechanical explanation may lay 
claim to exact knowledge, while teleological' explanation simply 
expresses our ignorance, is not valid. The fact is that both prin- 
ciples merely indicate the way that an intelligence like ours must 
look at objects; and this is ju,st as true of mechanism as it is 
of design. Mechanism indicates a way that we must look at 
objects where the whole is the result of the action and reaction 
of parts which are prior to the whole; and teleology indicates 
a way that we must look at those objects where the whole is 
prior to the parts, or where the whole and the parts depend 
reciprocally upon each other. Since this is true, something 
which Kant himself claims, we may not say in a positive way 
that mechanism determines its cla,ss of objects any more than 
teleology determines its class of objects; or that mechanism 
holds the key to knowledge while teleology only sheds light 
upon our ignorance. It is just a,s much to the point to speak 
of a regulative mechanism as it is to speak of a regulative tele- 
ology. And, on the other hand, since both principles are called 
for by our experience of certain objects of nature: the one by 
the organic and the other by the inorganic, and since in each 
case we do ultimately receive some instructions from the objects 
themselves, we may speak of an empirical teleology as well as 
of an empirical mechanism. Teleology has just ajS much con- 
stitutive value for the understanding in its determination of a 
blade of grass as mechanism has in its determination of a 
rock crystal. It is a kind of causation that is as real as me- 
chanical causation, and is not more of an enigma to the under- 
standing than mechanism. 

Professor Caird, in his Critical Philosophy of Kant, looks 
at this particular problem from an angle which is diametrically 
opposite to that from which Kant views it. Caird maintains 
that the organic object is the one that -is most intelligible, for 
it comes nearest to the nature of our own intelligence. The 
one thing of which we have immediate and exact knowledge is 
the organic unity, or the content of our own consciousness, and 
from this we pass, in a decreasing ratio of certainty, to the 



65 

inorganic, which is least intelligible because it is most unlike 
the nature of our own intelligence. The only way that we can 
know the inorganic at all is by the impartation of the nature 
of our own intelligence to it. In fact Caird would have us be- 
lieve that the inorganic object exists and is real only as it is em- 
braced within the unity of our own consciousness. The only 
reason why the organic object which i,s not mind, like the blade 
of grass, is seemingly more difficult for us to explain than 
the inorganic object is the fact that it is an organism so 
different from the organism which has a mind. The dis- 
similarity in spite of the similarity is what make,s it appear an 
enigma to us. The difficulty lies in the fact "that the nearness 
in form to the intelligence brings into prominence its still re- 
maining difference."^ But this difficulty is only apparent and 
not real. 

Although I cannot agree with Caird's point of view, I am 
not unmindful of the fact that he can support his claim with 
the same show of reason that Kant can support the opposite 
view that the mechanically caused object is the more readily 
intelligible to us. In fact this vague epistemological idealism 
of Caird and of some of the po,st-Kantian idealists has its source 
in the claim of Kant that the determination of objects by the 
categories is necessarily relative to consciousness, and the ob- 
jects so determined are therefore mere phenomena, i. e., objects 
for as. The object under mechanical laws would then exist 
only by an abstraction and not as an objective reality external 
to consciousness. From this position it is only a small step to 
the conclusion of Caird and post-Kantian idealism. The fact 
of the matter is that after all is said that has been said by 
philosophers, both idealists and realists, who have looked at the 
p'oblem from different points of view, it i,s obvious that both 
principles express an element of truth of which we may not be 
unmindful if we would explain the whole of our experience. 
In each case an undetermined x remains which represents our 
ignorance ; but this is as true of mechanism as it is of teleology. 

a The Critical Philosophy of Kant, Vol. II, p. 530. 



66 



It wa,s also pointed out in our exposition that Kant makes 
a distinction between the judgment as heteronomous and the 
judgment as autonomous ; and between a domestic principle of 
science and a foreign principle. The judgment as heteronomous 
receives from the understanding the universal law or principle 
under which it must sub,sume the particular. The judgment as 
heteronomous has no alternative. It must subsume the particu- 
lar of our experience under this law which it receives from the 
understanding. And the principle with which the understand- 
ing furnishes the judgment is a domestic principle, for it is part 
and parcel of the cognitive machine. Now mechanism, or the 
category of universal causation progressing in a linear series 
from cause to effect, or from the parts to the whole, is such 
a domestic principle which gives us knowledge of the phenomena 
which are subsumed under it. But the judgment as autonomous 
does not receive the law from the understanding, and receiving 
no instructions from the objects themselves, it has the autonomy 
to give a universal law to itjSelf under which it will subsume 
the particulars of our experience in those cases where only the 
particular is given for which, however, a universal must be 
found. The only universal which the judgment can give to 
itself under which the manifold particulars of our experience 
can be subsumed is this idea of design. But the idea of design, 
unlike mechanism, is a foreign principle. It is not part and 
parcel of the cognitive machine and so determining what our 
experience must be (like the category of causation), but is an 
idea borrowed from reason, which enables us to think somethnig 
which we cannot know. And since it is only a foreign principle 
borrowed merely to help us out of a difficulty, we may not in- 
troduce it into our philosophy in a determinate way. We may 
use it only as a guide to our reflection upon tho^e things where 
mechanism fails. This explains why Kant so stubbornly re- 
fuses to allow any constitutive value to the ideas of reason. 

We must again admire Kant for guarding us with all his 
might against the introduction into our scientific and philosophic 
investigations of any whim or fancy which may pass through 



67 

cur inexperienced minds. It is in the interest of exact knowl- 
edge that he would limit us as he does. But we fail to see any 
legitimate reason for his stubborn insistence that mechanism is 
a domestic principle and teleology a foreign principle, — that the 
one i,s part and parcel of the cognitive machine, while the other 
is only a principle borrowed from reason as a theoretic con- 
venience. 

It would be going out of our way, in this connection* 
to enter into a discussion of Kant's doctrine of a priori forms 
and principles; and yet a word on this subject is necessary to 
show that, in the ultimate analysis of the mental machine, the 
terms domestic and foreign are seen to be equally applicable to 
either the mechanical or the teleological principle. We must 
recognize the fact that with Kant a priori is not a psychological, 
but a purely epidemiological signification ; it means not a chrono- 
logical priority to experience, but a logical priority; it means a 
universality and necessary validity in the principles of reason 
which really transcends all experience, and is not capable of be- 
ing proved by any experience. Not to recognize this from the 
beginning would mean ultimate failure in our efforts to under- 
stand Kant. But if we carry our psychological analysis of the 
mental machine back of the individual (something which Kant 
did not do) we will see that the a priori forms and categories 
with which the individual is born and with which he begins his 
mental experience and by which his experience is determined, 
are all the result of the racial experience of his progenitors. 
The individual perceives all things in space and time, and hang- 
ing together by the string of cause and effect, because the race 
has never experienced them in any other way. The fact that 
the individual now determines his experience by these categories 
is because the experience of the race was determined that way 
before him. In other words, what the individual now gives to 
objects of his experience the race before him received from ob- 
jects. The a priori forms and principles by means of which 
the individual's experience is determined are borrowed from the 
experience of the race. That which is an a priori and domestic 



68 

principle in the individual was an a posteriori principle with 
the race before him. We might say that it is a foreign or racial 
principle which has become naturalised, or individualized. The 
a priori neural synthesis with which each individual is born and 
which determines his experience is the result of a racial exper- 
ience. According to the ultimate analyses of the mental machine 
the idea of design is not more foreign to the understanding than 
mechanism, for when the reflective judgment borrows the idea 
of design from reason it borrows a principle of which both the 
race and the individual have had actual experience. In the ulti- 
mate psychological analysis both principles are equally domestic, 
for both are part and parcel of the mental machine as it now 
exists; and both are equally foreign, for both are ultimately 
borrowed from the experience of the race. Both principles con- 
tain an undetermined and undeterminable x which represents 
cur intellectual limitations sufficiently clear to keep any honest 
man mode,st in his scientific and philosophic pretensions. 

The understanding knows two and only two principles of 
causation, and these are mechanism, which proceeds in a linear 
series from cause to effect, and from the parts to the whole; 
and causation according to an intelligence, which adapts means 
to an end ,set by reason. Both principles are equally necessary 
and valid for our philosophic investigations of nature and her 
products. How the two principles are ultimately related in the 
creation and evolution of the universe, and whether or not they 
coalesce in an Archetypal Understanding we cannot know. But 
that there are these two types of causation of which we can 
have actual exprience and knowledge we do know; and neither 
one nor the other may be disregarded in an effort to investigate 
the whole of nature. 

One reason why Kant is so reluctant to grant determinant 
value to teleology is the supposed finality and completeness of 
the table of categories in the Critique of Pure Reason. He could 
not admit a new category without disturbing the table already 
established and, what i,s more, at the same time necessitating the 



69 

reconstruction of his theory of knowledge. But the objective 
validity of the teleological principle can be justified by an ap- 
peal to the principle which Kant himself employed as guide in 
the deduction of the categories. In the Critique of Pure Reason 
he says on this particular point: "It is really a sufficient deduc- 
tion of the categories and a justification of their objective va- 
lidity if we succeed in proving that by them alone an object 
can be thought." According to this principle of deduction the 
validity of a category is justified if it can be shown that it is 
necessarily required and presupposed in our actual experience. 
Now if it is true, as Kant claims, that the mechanical explana- 
tion of the world leaves our knowledge incomplete; and if it is 
true that we cannot fully understand nature until we have an 
insight into its meaning and purpose, i. e., until we study it 
by the help of the idea of design, then what reason have we 
for denying ihis principle the objective validity that we claim 
for mechanism? Our experience, as Kant claims, can never be 
a real unity apart from this idea of design. It i,s necessary to 
satisfy our demand for complete explanation, and to make the 
world fully intelligible to ourselves; and this being the case the 
principle of teleology is proved, or justified, in exactly the same 
way as the categories of pure reason. 

It w^s pointed out in our Exposition that Kant applies the 
idea of design also to collective nature. He led up to this con- 
clusion by a quite different path from that which led to the 
application of design to objects of beauty and life. This way 
had already been travelled over in the Critique of Practical 
Reason. There he had come to the conception of a highest good, 
viz., virtue, or subjective worthiness to be happy, which every 
man is bound to seek to realize; and also a complete good, or 
happiness in proportion to our worthiness to be happy, which 
every man is entitled to postulate as possible of realization. But 
this realization involves a conformity of nature to the law of 
reason which, however, nothing in the conception or experience 
of nature herself enables us to anticipate. This means that nat- 
ure must ultimately be thought of as a teleological system for 



70 

which the final end is determined by the same practical reason 
which determines the end of human conduct. This same argu- 
ment is again worked over in the Critique of Judgment. The 
realization of this complete good, or happiness in proportion to 
our worthiness to be happy, is possible only through the media- 
tion of God. There is a moral necessity, therefore, for assum- 
ing God, for if there is no God we can find no adequate encour- 
agement for the hope that this highest end which reason un- 
conditionally enjoins unpon us (and that this complete good 
which is the innate right of every man) can ever be realized. 
But to this argument he addjS the all-important proviso that we 
must not make our morality depend upon our theology, for it 
rests solely upon it,s own unconditioned necessity; and that we 
must not ascribe objective reality to the concept of a Supreme 
Being which we are obliged to assume for purely practical rea- 
sons, but to which no possible experience can correspond. 

Kant is unquestionably right when he vigorously protests 
against making our morality depend upon our theology. If a 
man should, because of any weakness in the speculative argu- 
ments, or because of any irregularities in the course of nature, 
cease to believe in God, he may not, on this account, also cease 
to be moral. If he should he would be a contemptible creature. 
And he is also right in his earnest contention for the worthi- 
ness of faith in God and the future life, and for the pragmatic 
value of such an attitude of mind. Without such faith our best 
moral efforts mu,st appear to us as ultimately vain. 

But when Kant absolutely denies us all access to and knowl- 
edge of what he calls noumenon in general, and in particular 
of this Supreme Being whom we must assume for the sake of 
our morality, we must dispute the ground on which he does it. 
He does this on the epistemological ground established in the 
first Critique. In the Transcendental Analytic and Dialectic he 
drew a sharp line of demarcation between the phenomenal and 
the noumenal. There is a phenomenal world which appears to our 



71 

sensibility, and of th^s we have experience and knowledge. But 
the noumenal world, which must be thought as the ground and 
ultimate cause of the phenomenal world does not appear to our 
sensibility, and of this we can have no experience and no knowl- 
edge. The only ground of the possibility of the objective exist- 
ence of this Supreme Being whom we must think for the ,sake 
of morality is the fact that it can be thought without a contra- 
diction, but this does not guarantee its actual existence, and 
much less its synthetic predicates. 

Kant is no doubt right that our knowledge is limited to 
phenomena. We can know only what appears, in some way, 
to the senses. Our knowledge is limited, in one sense, to what 
our mind is able to make out of the forty-five or fifty thousand 
sensations, or ultimate elements of consciousness. But if the 
noumenon is the ground of the phenomenon then a noumenon 
at rest behind the phenomenon is a misconception. If the noume- 
non is the ground of the phenomenon, then obviously there is 
something of the noumenon given in the phenomenon, and in 
our knowledge of the phenomenon we have .some knowledge of 
the noumenon. Every phenomenon is a manifestation of some 
noumenon, and through its manifestations we have some knowl- 
edge of the noumenon itself. It is true that the most painstak- 
ing psychological analysis cannot lay bare to our gaze a nou- 
menal mind-stuff, or entity, but only a number of mental pro- 
cesses. Scientifically we cannot define mind as anything other 
than the sum of these processes. But that there can be no men- 
tal processes without something in which these processes inhere 
is an a priori certainty; and that we have some knowledge of 
this ultimate something through its manifestations needs no 
elucidation. The noumenon, whether in the case of a tree, or 
our own ,souls, or the Supreme Being himself, is the sum-total 
of its sensible manifestations plus something more; and it i,s 
only this something more that really evades us. But there is 
no valid epistemological ground to deny UjS all access to it. The 
better we get to know the phenomena of a thing the nearer 
we approach the thing as it i,s in itself. There will no doubt al- 



72 



ways remain enough of an x, whether we contemplate a blade 
of grass or the Supreme Being, to pluck our mental wing- 
feathers and prevent the flights of speculative fancy. 

But in the case of the Supreme Being Kant denies us all 
acces,s, not only on the ground that it does not appear to our 
sensibility and so cannot become an object of any possible ex- 
perience, but also on the ground that the Infinite, which we are 
obliged to think, is absolutely different in kind from the finite 
so that we cannot even reason from that which we know of our 
own minds to that which we must think in the case of the Divine 
mind. His refutation of the argument from analogy proceeds 
on this assumption. We can infer the mind of our neighbor 
from his behavior because our neighbor and we belong to the 
same class of beings. We can infer (Kant would admit) that 
animals, in their building operations, etc., use their minds in 
some way analogous to the use we make of our own minds, be- 
cause the animal must be considered as belonging to the class of 
finite beings, and in thi l s respect to the same class as man. But 
this argument from analogy, Kant claims, may not be applied 
to the Supersensible. We cannot infer the mind of God as 
cause of nature from anything we see or know in the world of 
sense. He denies us the right to do this because the Supersensible 
is absolutely different in kind from anything we can experience 
or know. If this would be true there could be no refutation of 
Kant's argument. But he has not proved his assumption. The 
Divine Mind, or the Intuitive Understanding of which he speaks 
so much, and which he says we must think as cause of nature, 
is infinitely different in the degree of its insight and foresight 
from our finite and discursive understanding, but it does not 
necessarily follow from this that it is absolutely different in kind 
from our own minds. Our minds are, in the main, discursive, 
but are not altogether limited to this particular mode of opera- 
tion. In the transpiration of an event in time, for example, we 
perceive the particular acts which make up the event only pro- 
gressively in a linear series, i. e., moment by moment. Our per- 
ception proceeds in a purely discursive fashion. Or in the solu- 



73 



tion of an ordinary problem in arithmetic we proceed step by 
step, in the solution and see the conclusion only after the sev- 
eral steps in the solution have been taken. This is a type 
of discursive reasoning. But in those propositions in mathe- 
matics which we call axioms we foresee the conclusion in the 
statement of the proposition. In this case we foresee the end 
or the conclusion of the process without taking the necessary 
steps in the process of solution. In this latter case our under- 
standing is of the intuitive type. It would be absurb to say 
that we are employing two absolutely different minds in these 
two distinctively different mental processes. In this latter case 
we foresee the conclusion in the statement of the proposition 
because we ourselves, by the very nature and constitution of 
our understanding, have given the law to the problem in ques- 
tion. And it is just this thing which the Intuitive Understand- 
ing of which Kant speaks does. It foresees the end of a process 
to which it itself has given the law before the progressive steps 
in the process have been taken. There is therefore no valid 
ground why we may not reason by analogy from what we know 
of our own minds to the Divine Mind which we must think as 
the basis of nature and her products. 



That the Supersensible as it is in itself does not appear to 
us through any sensible manifestations is not more true of the 
Divine Mind than it is of the finite mind of our neighbor. His 
mind as a Kantian thing -in-its elf is just as unknowable an x as 
is the Divine Mind. We judge of his behavior as action ac- 
cording to ideas of reason because of certain sensible manifesta- 
tions. We have absolutely nothing else by means of which to 
judge. We do this and only this when we judge of the Divine 
Mind as cause of the phenomena of nature because of certain 
sensible appearances which bear the trade-marks of mind. // 
there are products of nature, as Kant claims, which cannot be 
explained by mere mechanical laws; and if there is, as he fur- 
ther contends, a specification of nature in the origin and main- 
tenance of the species which cannot be explained on any other 



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ground than that of adaptation according to design, then we 
have a valid reason, based on sound epistemological grounds, 
for our belief in Mind as the ultimate cause of nature and her 
products. That there should be greater difficulty experienced 
in understanding the Intelligence which we must think as cause 
of nature than there i,s in the case of the intelligence which must 
be thought as the cause of our neighbor's behavior, or the be- 
havior of animals, is evident because of the vast difference in 
the manifold particulars of the manifestations, and still more 
because of the infinite degree of the difference in the intelli- 
gence manifested. But the ,still-remaining similarity between 
the two will enable us to reason by analogy from the one to the 
ether even in spite of this specific dissimilarity. 

I have the sincerest respect for the type of pragmatism 
which has its root in Kant',s second Critique. It steers clear of 
that cheap scepticism which had its source in his first Critique. 
But his pragmatism leaves unsatisfied a legitimate need of 
thought and life. Even for the sake of morality we need a 
more substantial God than the mere postulation of an idea 
which is supposed to encourage us in our efforts to live up to 
the dictates of the moral imperative, or which shall give us the * 
victory over an indifferent world. Even as a mere matter of 
faith from a pure practical point of view a thing must, in some 
way, approve itself to the understanding as valid doctrine. An 
idea of reason with which we fool our understanding can, to 
say the least, never serve as a strong motive to conduct. In 
this last great work of his Kant blazed the way in the right di- 
rection but, because of the limitations set for himself in his prev- 
ious works, failed to follow some of his important assumptions 
to their legitimate conclusions- 



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